Udaan

Udaan must be Vikrmaditya Motwane’s brilliant debut as a director, Rajat Barmecha’s dream comes true as leading actor in a Hindi movie propelled by a strong script by Anurag Kashyap, but to me the revelation of the movie was Ronit Roy!

The last time I saw him was when I was a teenager and he was prancing around singing “First time dekha tumhe hum kho gaya second time mein love ho gaya, ye akkha india jaanta hai hum tum pe marta hai , dil kya cheez hai jaanam apni  jaan tere naam karta hai” –in Jaan Tere Naam. It was a peppy song, but very dated, the one that’ll definitely find a place in the ‘I am ashamed to admit I used to like this song’ list. Ronit Roy was a one movie wonder. In the almost two decades in between Jaan Tere Naam and Udaan Google has informed me that Mr.Roy had gone from being a jobless one hit wonder to small screen’s Amitabh Bachchan and an owner of an renowned private security firm. Lack of Indian TV signals in my part of the globe kept me blissfully unaware of all that, till Udaan.

Udaan is a neatly made coming of age movie from an industry that doesn’t make many coming of age movies. I wonder whether there are any autobiographical aspects to it. Gorakhpur, UP where Anurag Kashyap grew up and Jamshedpur, Jharkhand where Udaan is set, can claim geographic proximity in the greater order of things. Besides, like Rajat Barmecha’s character in the movie, Mr.Kashyap is also a product of boarding schools. Rajat Barmecha, got a role of a lifetime as a small town kid, Rohan, trying to find his own identity from under the shadow of his despotic father, Bhairav Singh(Ronit Roy.) 

There a few other small but significant characters played by Ram Kapoor, Anand Tiwari and Manjot Singh. A natural narrative, characters that audience can relate to and a great script contribute to the quality of the film. It does remind me of 80s art-house movies.