Let there be no doubt about this. Udaan is a magnificent film. In fact it is perhaps the most important direction—finder of Hindi films for a long long time. With a spate of crisp stoytelling like Aamir, A Wednesday, Mumbai Meri Jaan, in recent times, our appetites were being whetted. Udaan shows how Hindi films are maturing.Directors are now writing and filming their stories—and they are not being pressurised to take stars, include dances, stage violent ‘Ackshun!!’, and incorporate unnecessary songs and unrealistic costumes.
There is a story here of a teenager growing up with an autocratic and mentally depraved father. The father’s Hitlerian approach and his conception of a mard smacks of mental deficiencies, and in an effort to bolster up the story, Ronit Roy is made larger than life, though stopping short of a caricature. Jamshedpur men, as we would believe from this film assault their wives and children, drink, and do not care for the Arts, even if they study in the best schools of India. And the one man who betrays some humanity from the older generation is the one who is impotent.
This tinkering with the script would have us believe that the best way of having a good time, is to sneakily take the family car, steal money from your father’s wallet, go to a bar, drink, deliberately get into fights, stick out your body from a car, wave your arms and curse repeatedly at the top of your voice. And a father will consider his son as a Macho Mard only if they smoke, drink and have sex by the age of 17!!!!!!!
Is it mandatory for films (Three Idiots etc) to deliberately ignore the millions of hard working parents who sacrifice all their lives so that their children can have a better, financially assured life, and who do not curse, drink, smoke, marry repeatedly,and beat up their children. Flying (Udaan) requires training, knowledge and skill which a boy of 17 does not have.And persons who do badly at school. will NOT get into a decent college. Certainly not in premier Arts Courses of premier Colleges. So, there is a necessity for the children also to assume some responsibility and accountability to their parents.I cannot imagine a parent not visiting his son for e-i-g-h-t years!!!! Another cinematic licence to bolster up the need for Rohan(the protagonist) to break rules deliberately and get expelled.
However, these are aberrations in a film of sublime directorial touches—the recurring barbed wire in front of Ronit Roy’s(Rohan’s Father) house is a case in point. The daily ritualistic race to the house, and Rohan’s final winning run away from his father’s clutches.—is another. The failure of the car to start at one go is wisely used in the climax seen. Jamshedpur has never been portrayed so well.The mix of hard work, hard drinkers, hard disciplinarians, in a palpably small town setting is sometimes frighteningly accurate. The high point of the boy smashing his father’s old irritating car could have come better as an apex of a vertex of small frustrations piling up till something broke at the top. Again , one is left wondering, whether the director believes that smashing your father’s car is a valid option of protest—because there is a distinct possibility, after this film, of a number of teenagers subjecting their parent's vehicles to the scrapheap.
Vikramaditya Motwane, the director and class friend of Abhisekh Bacchan(really!!!!) scores full marks in the casting department. Rohan( Rajat Barmeccha) is disarmingly innocent faced who switches from his rebel behaviour to a talented wannabee writer with consummate ease. When he is on the receiving end of his father’s ire—his demeanour brings lumps to the throats of the middle aged Moms in the audience. The child actor ( Aayan Boradia) who plays Arjun , Rohan’s stepbrother is one of the finest selections in Indian films with touches of Shekhar Kapoor’s Masoom boy Jugal Hansraj. But the acting honours are taken away by Ronit Roy in a role of a lifetime. Undertoned voice, lurking danger in his eyes and demeanour, supremely fit at his age, restless, intense, one track mind, obsessed with male macho image, and yet in his own misguided way trying his best for his sons and yet feeling defeated by them in a competition to get attention from their mothers.Ronit treads the swaying wire between a caricature and a believable oversized ,larger than life character with aplomb. His brother’s role is enacted with great skill by Ram Kumar who shows remarkable sensitivity and underplays to form a perfect foil to the hyper reacting Ronit.What a wonderful talent pool of actors are being wasted by Bollywood and their masala films with their terrible masala recipe….
The greatest achievement of the Director was that never, even once did he let the film drift. That is why, there are no female actors except in absentia –no dances, no lipped songs, no distractions or deviations.
Music Director Amit Trivedi did not create any memorable songs. Cinematographer Mahendra Shetty was competent and did capture the essence of Jamshedpur. However shots sometimes were ill lit and very stock shottish.The print at INOX Swabhumi Kolkata had as much as 6 black screens!!! If this is also in the best prints, then the Editor, Dipika Kalra has done a bad job. These type of shoddy prints could have ruined this film. But it flies too high—albeit with a few hiccups—a magnificent lighthouse to millions of viewers and budding directors and scriptwriters.
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