Boong Movie Review:

Perspective. In a country that is so diverse that there is a new language, a new cuisine, a new landscape, a new cultural ethos, and even a new set of rules and regulations every 100-200 kilometres, perspective is everything. That is why it feels futile to try to make sense of the things that are ‘different.’ Why not just embrace the vibrance of diversity without trying to burden it with the monotony of uniformity? When Lakshmipriya Devi’s Boong presents us with her view of Manipur, it doesn’t ask us to analyse the differences, but to appreciate the similarities. And the best way to do it is to tell a film through the eyes of a boy, who might be corrupted by the world around him, but he has the excuse of saying, “But I didn’t know better.”

That is why when Brojendro Singh, aka Boong (a terrific Gugun Kipgen), changes the signboard of his school to read, “Homo Boys School…” his mother, Mandakini (an understated but wonderful Bala Hijam), tells him a very simple but powerful line. “A word is only as bad as you think.” Would he understand the implications of that advice? Probably not. But it isn’t directed just at her son. It is directed at the audience who might have sniggered appreciatively at what the kid did. In fact, this is a microcosm of how the film plays out in its 90-minute run. Boong is as much a film about a child becoming a man as it is about grown people in the audience coming to terms with their own prejudices and opinions about a land they know very little about. 

Director: Lakshmipriya Devi

Cast: Gugun Kipgen, Bala Hijam, Angom Sanamatum, Vikram Kochhar

Boong and Mandakini have stayed alone in Imphal ever since his father Joykumar went missing. Calls have stopped coming from Joykumar, who had a fledgling furniture business based out of Moreh, on the Myanmar-India border. Mandakini sends voice notes to a number that hasn’t responded in a while. So does Boong. Interestingly, Lakshmipriya never portrays Boong as anything but a young boy. He gets angry. He gets frustrated. He gets helpless. He gets scared. And yet, he is brave. In fact, the film, when it plays out through the eyes of Boong, is a compelling documentation of how the North East isn’t all that different from the ‘mainland.’ 

Boong touches upon a myriad of themes, including patriarchy, racism, bigotry, identity, assimilation, ostracization, feminism, and indoctrination. Through Boong’s Marwari friend, Raju (a fantastic Angom Sanamatum) and his father Sudhir (a restrained and effective Vikram Kochhar), the film tells the story of how quickly the world can turn against its minorities. Despite being a third-generation resident of Manipur, Raju finds himself at the receiving end of systemic othering. Some kids pry open their own eyes to make fun of his looks and insult him for being darker than they are. Of course, Boong comes in support of his friend, but when things go south between them, he doesn’t think twice before insulting Raju’s ancestry and heritage. But these are young boys and young girls who are doing this, and just like that, after a point, everything is forgotten without the need to even forgive. It is beautiful how the writing allows them to be children, but serves as a warning sign to the grown-ups that their actions are having more than just a subliminal impact on the next generation. Should we rejoice that our kids are racist, or should we be glad that there is still time for course correction? 

Since Boong is essentially an adventure with children at the centre of the narrative, it tends to lean towards the whimsical side of things. It is the kind of a film where two kids travel in a hearse lying next to a friend’s dead grandfather. It is the kind of a film where everyone in a new land tries their best to be nice to the children. Nothing untoward happens to them even though we are tuned to expect the worst to happen. But this also means the film, at times, takes convenient routes to answer certain difficult questions. The film trades conviction for emotion, and expects us to be swayed by it, which we do, to a certain extent. But when it becomes one convenience too many, we tend to observe the cracks beneath the emotionally charged, poignant, and surprisingly funny exterior.  

Nevertheless, even amidst the lightness of the narrative, Lakshmipriya packs quite the punch with its scathing commentary on the hypocrisy of the people in power. When it talks about how Manipur is disconnected from the mainland, the lines are laced with acerbic wit. When it talks about the consequences of insurgency and the kind of lives lived by people who are left behind, it doesn’t forget that the film is essentially a children’s film. Even these themes are seen through the eyes of the kids. The only interaction with the soldiers on the border happens with the kids and not the adults. And when the adults are involved in the narrative, Lakshmipriya removes the kid’s gloves to showcase how women are always treated like second-class citizens, irrespective of where they are, and how they have to live through life with the illusion of choice. And even with the final reveal, Lakshmipriya has a strong message to convey. It questions the idea of how the ‘others’ expect such stories to end. It questions the sensationalism that is accorded to stories from this part of the country. It questions mainstream cinema’s impact on our movie-watching temper. We have forgotten what it is to have a story told to us without having to play the futile game of, ‘I am smart… I know where you are going with this.’ It felt nice to be humbled, and this made it easier to follow Lakshmipriya as she guided us through the film she wanted to make, instead of us pulling the film along with us to adhere to our thoughts and beliefs. 

Through the story of a son’s quest to find his missing father, Boong serves up a tale of a land that feels abandoned by the patriarch. It also talks about how the problem of ‘outsiders’ is universal, and how, in a country like India, you can never really be only one thing. All it takes for a ‘native’ to feel like an ‘outsider’ is a couple of hundred kilometres of travel. The languages, the cuisine, the landscape, the weather, the cultural ethos, the rules, and the regulations might be completely different, but we all share an emotional core. If a film set in Iran or Palestine or Poland or the USA or Kyrgyzstan can move someone sitting in the confines of their home in Chennai, can’t a film set within the same country do the trick… much more effectively? Boong might be the story of a boy turning into a man, very much against his will. But it is also the story of a film, which might be rough around the edges, but manages to resonate with the world by simply existing and showcasing the mundane. Sometimes, the world becomes smaller and hence, closer, when we know we share the same problems, the same issues, and are as clueless as ever.