A personal ode to theatre, Soumyajit Majumdar’s directorial debut, #Homecoming, attempts at invoking an emotional response to the art form’s decline in popular culture.
Members of a youth theatre group, ‘Amra’, reunite seven years after graduating from college, at a house party being held at their old rehearsal space. The looming realisation that this space will soon to be turned into a heritage hotel becomes the focal point of all conversations as characters ruminate on the time spent there.
As friends trickle into the party, we learn where these characters ended up after their theatre group dissolved. Some like Sri (Sayani Gupta) followed a similar path into film acting, while others like Abhishek aka ‘Godot’ turned to the corporate life. Majumdar’s frames this party as a space for these (now grown-up) characters to think about an alternate direction the theatre group could have taken.
A good reunion film stands on the foundational knowledge of the strong relationship the characters used to share. In the absence of that it has to rely on the chemistry between actors. However, #Homecoming lacks both.
Majumdar tries to steer several short films together, as we see distinct conversations run parallelly between different friend groups at the party, but he struggles to bind these together with a cohesive thread.
Theatre is supposed to be the strand that ties these individuals, but since we get only glimpses of their time as ‘Amra’, it becomes hard to care for the fizzled-out friendships, broken relationships, and failed careers. The youth theatre group is only ever shown in quick short flashbacks, almost always without dialogues.
Sadly, like the fleeting flashbacks, the present-day interactions between these reunited friends play out on a surface level. The film hardly touches base with how these friendships were formed, or what has left them so frayed now.
Communication that is supposed to provide context for the characters’ emotions, barely registers an impact, as we either get exposition dump or overtly high-brow one liners.
#Homecoming
Director: Soumyajit Majumdar
Cast: Sayani Gupta, Hussain Dalal, Soham Majumdar, Tushar Pandey, Tuhina Das, and others
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes
Storyline: A group of friends reunite at their old theatre rehearsal space after seven years, reminiscing the impact that theatre had on their lives
As the party progresses, we are made aware that Shubho (Tushar Pandey) is missing from the party and has been ignoring attempts his friends have made to get in touch with him. Later when he finally arrives at the party, we get a two-minute-long scene of him going on an impassioned speech about the decline of “good theatre.”
Shubho, the theatre purist who ventured into acting but now finds himself lost and cynical, could have been used as a window for the audience to personify the struggles of a dying art form.
Instead, Shubho spends his time talking about the takeover of artificial Intelligence, that will decimate creativity. He then turns his focus to the audience, the middle class who he chastises for “celebrating regressive gimmicks and mediocrity.” This sermonising, which irritates his on-screen friends, does not move the audience given that we still don’t know the positive impact of theatre in his life.
However, while the writing may leave much to be desired, the visuals come through as a saving grace. For a film that mostly takes place in one location, cinematographer Anup Singh’s work doesn’t leave you bored while wandering around this house party.
For a film that spends so much time on expressing sadness over what the friends lost as they drifted apart, and what the culture is losing as theatre loses steam, it never actually shows us the value of what they possessed.
The film tries to achieve a lot, but like its characters, fails to fulfil its artistic ambitions.
#Homecoming is currently streaming on SonyLIV
