The best Hindi movie is ‘Udaan’. Will Hindi cinema hold on to the wings of this film and take flight?

Rohan is just another ‘normal’ kid, rebellious and dreamer. After being expelled from boarding school, he has to live with his authoritarian, harsh father in the steel town of Jamshedpur. It is understandable that the apple has fallen as far from the tree as it is possible.

The father runs a small steel plant and wants his son to be an engineer and enjoys defeating him in running, while the son sits on railway tracks, under a tree, by the bed of a river, composing poetry. Senior Singh cannot digest the fact that his son dreams of being a writer. So he makes his rules clear to both Rohan and his young step-brother Arjun.

Rohan rebels in his own little ways, but has to concede to his fathers demands. When he comes to know that the reason for his step-brother’s hospitalization is because of a beating from his father, he seethes with rage, but can do nothing.

Yet, in the end you cannot hold a rebellious spirit down and Rohan breaks free from his restraints.

‘Udaan’ will not only resonate with those who had a distressed childhood, but with anyone who has faced oppression, or ever nurtured dreams. The movie is an analogy of life and of a nation’s social ethos.

Another movie that came out earlier this year ‘Leaving Home’, a documentary about the band Indian Ocean, resonated with the same middle-class aspiration that ‘Udaan’ experiments with. There too the band members detail how they had had to fight their own parents and the system to become artists.

The cast gives a remarkable performance.

Rajat Barmecha as Rohan is a precious find, while Ronit Roy as his father reminds you of another super-villain of world cinema. Looking at his maturely controlled performance, you wonder what he is doing wasting time overacting for television.

Yet, the winner is director Vikramaditya Motwane. It is also a delicious, beautiful debut.

Hence, in the end, when Rohan outruns his father, you cannot help but celebrate, you only wish Bollywood too comes out of the restraints of its own clichés and open its arms to directors like Motwane.

If nothing, the fact that even after seven months Bollywood has not had a single hit in 2010 should be sign enough for them to adopt the much needed newness.

‘Udaan’ is worthy to watch.