Udaan

Director: Vikramaditya Motwane

Rating:****

Every boy heads towards manhood,and the rites of that passage determine what kind of life he will have. ‘Udaan’ is a terrific,moving coming-of-age film,made by first-time director Vikramaditya Motwane.

Rohan’s ( Barmecha) hostel has been his home for the past eight years : he may not have been technically abandoned by his father,but he might be forgiven for thinking so for all the parental attention he’s had during these years. A prank gets him thrown out of his expensive boarding school,and he is packed off to live with his authoritarian father ( Roy).

Rohan’s journey takes him from hilly Simla to flat Jamshedpur,instantly taking the film  to places where people live. The father who wants Rohan to become an engineer,junking his passion for poetry and writing,could be that way because he may have been born thus,or he may have turned into an unfeeling martinet because he lives in that part of town which is full of faceless factories and machines and men in hard helmets.

Motwane knows his subject and terrain from the inside,and directs with complete assurance. Except for a couple of scenes which could have been dispensed with,there is nothing extraneous in this film : everything is as it should be.

Barmecha is a fresh-faced delight. So is the little boy ( Boradia) who plays his half brother. As Rohan’s sympathetic but helpless ‘chacha’,Ram Kapoor reveals the depths he can mine from a role with substance. And Ronit Roy,till now forced to play loud on TV soaps shows just how good an actor he can be,given the chance.

Anyone who’s lived in a hostel and knows the secret delight of breaking bounds to see an X-rated flick will instantly connect to Motwane’s film,India’s official entry at Cannes this year. So will those others who may have always lived at home and always been loved :  for a young spirit to want to fly free is a universal desire.

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com