REVIEW: Udaan

MONSTER DAD 

Vikramaditya Motwane’s debut film Udaan, about a young boy’s rebellion against a monster dad is realistic and has moments of power, but still leaves you with mixed feelings.

Seventeen-year-old Rohan and his friends are expelled from boarding school from running off to watch a porn film.  Rohan goes home after eight years, to find that he had a six-year-old half brother Arjun (Aayan Boradia) and his father (Ronit Roy) mistreats the child.

The father wants to make a “man” out of Rohan, his idea of discipline is cruelty, emotional deprivation and complete control.  The suggestion is that he was treated thus by his own father, and this is how he thinks he should treat his sons. 

However, sympathy often swings away from Rohan, because he is hardly a model son—he steals, sneaks off to drink and hang out with pals, flunks exams and does not, till the situation goes out of hand, have the courage to do the right thing. The end also seems too easy and idealistic.

The relationship between Rohan and his perpetually terrified kid brother is tender, but the father’s weird character remains unexplained and somewhat incomplete. Still,  Udaan portrays a side of the Great Indian Family that is at odds with what if fed to audiences through television and mainstream cinema.  Ronit Roy makes the best of his unidimensional part and Ram Kapoor as his genial brother makes a good foil to his relentless grimness.  Rohan Barmecha has the vulnerability required for the role, but little Aayan Boradia’s haunted eyes say a lot more about what lies behind the walls of so many ordinary homes.