Review of Udaan (2010) by Ravikiran D — 23 Jan 2012

Udaan begins as a ruthless breaking down of a dysfunctional Indian family (a topic which surely deserves to be looked at more often). A drunk father who beats up his son, who himself has been expelled from school for some harmless shenanigans, a brother seeking the drunkard's acceptance but never really owning up and a son born to the alcoholic off a different mother, for whom you feel nothing but pity.

But Udaan is also a story of hope. The very obvious companion piece for the movie 400 blows (I know what the title sounds like, it is not what you think it is), explored a lost childhood and finished with a glorious freeze frame on the beach, so full of hope and also anxiety. Udaan closes with a running scene which is quite powerful in its execution.

The father in Udaan is not an evil man, he is simply unhappy and a miserable father who prefers alienation and alcohol over anything else. The scene where he is drunk and asks personal questions to his son is almost perversely humourous, in that it is the only scene where the dad really opens up. The son has a talent of conjuring up the most dreamiest stories, a particularly vivid imagination which is expected in a child who has to resort to the comforts of the narrow corners of his mind, rather than the cozy hug of a father. The father, like the father in Taare Zameen Par and pretty much every other father in the world, thinks poetry gets you no money and wants his son to be an engineer.

There are some very relevant issues explored. Capital punishment, Child alienation, alcohol abuse by teenagers are all dealt with a honesty generally found lacking in anyone not named Anurag Kashyap.

Any review of Udaan would be incomplete without a mention of Amit Trivedi. Music is all pervasive in the movie, and he comes up trumps because you never realise the sound design (Kunal Sharma - Sound department) of the movie. The sounds of the iron and steel factory are used effectively to create the kind of soundscape that could reflect isolation. When you are alone, it is hard to listen to others.

Udaan might be a story of hope, but it is also a wake-up call. It relentlessly asks us city-dwellers to take a look at the smaller cities of India, which are urbanising at an extreme rate and are probably losing a lot in the bargain.