Udaan

Cast: Rajat Barmecha, Ronit Roy, Aayan Boradia, Ram Kapoor
Director: Vikramaditya Motwane
Certificate: U/A

Udaan is the story of anguish and breaking away to fly the kite of one’s dreams. The film begins with four mischievous teenagers who are expelled from school after being caught sneaking out of the hostel at night to watch a B-grade film Kanti Shah Ke Angoor.

Four of them are sent home. Of them, Rohan ( Rajat Barmecha), the 17-year-old sensitive writer, is sent back to his stern, unbending father who battles daily with his own demons. His father, Ronit Roy, is an embittered man who has two failed marriages before him, and a small scale steel business that is not exactly thriving

On his return home, Rohan finds a stepbrother Arjun (Boradia) who he did not know existed. The relationship of the boys develops beautifully as Rohan goes from being a bully to a caring older brother once he realises that little Arjun is also a victim of their father’s wrath.

Rohan's father wants him to be an engineer, which is why he has to attend a college while working in the steel plant. Rohan wants to be a writer and is truly talented . He meets a group of boys his own age, who are also trapped in the steel city of Jamshedpur, with cruel fathers and mute suffering mothers.

He is somewhat empowered among them, takes advantage of his father's drinking habit and slips out each night in his beaten up Contessa. After stealing money from his father's wallet. They go drinking in cheap joints, smoke a little, talk a lot. But there's a huge hole in Rohan's life, the size of the absence of his three friends who are now in Mumbai, working at a restaurant that one of them owns.

Rohan's father believes in a life lived according to clockwork precision, from the morning run where his son has to follow him around Jamshedpur, to the evening ritual of the doorbell ringing, money being exchanged and dinner being delivered in polythene bags.

Rohan doesn't say much. He prefers to express himself through his writing. But every frame speaks of the claustrophobia he is feeling. From the deadly dull classes on hydraulic engineering to the hours spent watching his father sipping whisky from an ice laden glass. These are the small towns that imaginations run free but usually get no outlet.

Barmecha is the quiet hero of this film. Whether he is sitting by the railway lines writing, or trying to hide his devastation when his father says his poems deserve no better than Grahshobha or Sarita, or trying to make his little brother talk after his father belts him. Whether he is outrunning his father in the last scene or smashing his car, he is quite stunning. But the script is riveting. As is the music by the favourite of all coming of age directors, Amit Trivedi.

Watch it and weep. And marvel at an extraordinary story told without veering into the maudlin. It's a tightly controlled drama without any melodrama.