In Retreat (2024) ‘Busan’ Movie Review: Maisam Ali’s Ladakh-set Film Evokes Tender Ache in Homecoming

A man returns home to Ladakh after many years in Maisam Ali’s “In Retreat.” His brother has passed away. Mourning brings him home but not quite. There’s a lot of perambulation; a fixed, finite moment where he crosses the threshold into his family house remains postponed. So he rambles through the night across lanes and streets of Ladakh.

Ali elides details and explanations. He’s not interested in a routine verbalization of family fault lines. The cracks in the distance that have been sedimented over the years between the man and his family come instead through reluctance. There are grudges and resentments held against him. He arrives on his home terrain but keeps deferring from entering the home itself. Confrontations are held off as long as one can. Pain and guilt, though, wedge themselves heavy and deep into the crevices of every frame.

In the melancholy-swathed “In Retreat,” there’s only circling, little or no resolution. On the fraught homecoming, the man grapples with the notion of home and emotional ties. Can one claim a place home if they have been away for the longest time? How does the attachment whittle away and what is left of its residue? The man tries to speak Ladakhi but can manage only scattered, mangled bits, strewn within the folds of Hindi. He has to be corrected, though he always insists to anyone he comes across that he is from Ladakh. Instead, he’s met with rebuffs to his claims, both kind and rude. The nightly wanderer (Harish Khanna in a performance invoking a lifetime of the unsaid) forges fleeting connections with utter strangers across a wide demographic. Some invite him to their place but he isn’t allowed further entry.

In Retreat (2024) ‘Busan’ Movie Review — A still from “In Retreat” (2024)

There’s no denial as such, instead an anguished acceptance of the loss that has interrupted the emotional affiliation to home and such spaces. But Ali doesn’t wheedle out a hopeful reconciliation. It’s too late for that. Loneliness singes the screen. As he puts it, sometimes it’s strange to be in one’s own backyard. Distance can create both yearning and disorientation. Ashok Meena’s camera gently traverses the spaces. The film is shot at a conscious remove from the conventional accentuation of Ladakh’s stunning expanse. There’s the blue hourlight, yes, but the reflective, observant tone opts to swing away as much as possible from awe-struck navel-gazing at the geography. In many ways, Ali smartly and emphatically counters the bent of visual poetry.

Maisam Ali’s “In Retreat” is exquisite, elusive whisper-like storytelling. There are no narrative signposts with which to tether our understanding of the man’s past. Atmospheric plangency wreaths the film. It’s hazy but also emotionally concise and direct. Strains of Western classical music wend their way through the film. It’s a curious choice that nevertheless brings gravity, a somber weight to the film.

We stumble through pockets of conversation. These play out like furtive, borrowed glimpses into everyday life in Ladakh, to which the unnamed protagonist can stake just a brief connection. It’s Ali’s triumph that he makes us care, in subtle, delicate strokes, for his sole character despite us being largely kept in the dark about his backstory. “In Retreat” is muted yet immensely moving. There are no drawn-out litanies here, just quiet, charged confidence in the telling, softly threading together an emotional register dipped in repressed grief.