Screen Share | Films that speak of homecoming

This year, certain work commitments have scuppered my plans to be home for Durga Puja. As I moped and whined and looked up new Bengali restaurants in Mumbai, my thoughts drifted to The Bear, which swept the comedy Emmys. In the globally-acclaimed series, Carmy, a top-rated New York chef, returns to his hometown of Chicago after his brother’s suicide. Over three anxiety-inducing seasons, we watch Carmy as he strains every nerve (his and everybody else’s) to turn their chaotic, family-owned sandwich shop into a high-end restaurant. Carmy is advised by his uncle to “be the guy”, to keep his eyes on the ball, yet home — with its unruly sauces and kitchen scars of grief — keeps butting in. 

Homecoming is a messy, delicate affair. Over a decade ago, we met a different Carmy, of a lower calibre. The 2012 Hindi comedy Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana is a bittersweet take on family, food, and identity. Having stolen from his own grandfather and skedaddled to the UK, Omi (Kunal Kapoor), years later, is forced to return. He takes over his family’s crumbling dhaba, but only a secret recipe, the titular ‘Chicken Khurana’, now lost, can restore its shine. Sameer Sharma’s film is The Bear on a low, gentle flame, and the final reveal is both hilarious and unexpected.

“Maybe that’s all a family really is,” says the protagonist of Garden State. “A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.” Watching Zach Braff’s 2004 comedy for this column, I was struck less by the intended poetry of that line than by how much Braff — who was 29 when he starred in his own directorial — resembled Sidharth Malhotra. One of Malhotra’s sturdier performances can be found in Kapoor & Sons (2016), a Bollywood comedy with the heart of an American dysfunctional family drama. There is a superlative scene — beautifully choreographed by director Shakun Batra — with the entire family yelling and blame-shifting as a broken water pipe gushes forth. It spills like home.

A still from ‘Garden State'

Not all homecoming films are comedies. There are countless thrillers — the 2020 Australian film The Dry comes to mind — where the central character returns to their childhood town and embeds themself in a mystery. Then there are the adoptees, in films like Lion (2016) andReturn to Seoul (2022), tugged by origins and quests that transcend geographies. There are also films that point to the impossibility of return: though Sumit and Priyanka, the eloped couple in Pokhar Ke Dunu Paar(2023), are back in Darbhanga, hard-up during the lockdown, they cannot go home.

Imaginary places, indeed. As Gregory Alan Isakov sings in ‘Big Black Car’, “Through the carnival we watch them go round and round // all we knew of home was just a sunset and some clowns.”

From The Hindu cinema team, a fortnightly column recommending films and shows tied to a mood, theme, or pop culture event.

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