SPIRITS SOAR SKYWARDS

Kai Poche

STARRIN G: Sushant Singh Rajput Raj Kumar Yadav, Amit Sadh, Amr ita Puri DIRECTED BY:

Abhishek Kapoor

t really can't get any better than this, can it? The year has just begun and we have one of the finest, most vi brant and fulfilling coming-of-age films in living memory

Kai Po Che (the war-call uttered during kite -flying in Gujarat) is not about kiteflying. In fact there is just one fleeting sequence, very effectively positioned in the meticulously structured narrative, where the characters actually fly kites Kai Po Che is about spirits soaring skywards, as the characters - each one so vividly etched into the compact narrative that you come away with people whom you will probably carry with you for keeps - let their spirits roam wild and free, soaki ng in the sunlight of desi re, longing, aspiring, stumbling and getting back on the feet.

Set in Gujarat during times of peace and unimaginable stress, Kai Po Che takes Chetan Bhagat's engaging novel about friendship among three d i ssimilar young people struggling to find their voices in Gujarat in and around the year 2000, and converts the written word into an enrapturing entity far beyond just a story well told

The three, joined by a fourth - a girl who happens to be the sister of one of the heroes secretl y involved with the hero's best friend - bring to life a world wher e the accidents of existence collide gently but powerfull y with man-made and natural calamities that shake the very exi stence of an Indian middle class, living on an edge where toppling over the abyss is a real possibility

Sure enough, by the end of the film one of heroes Omi (Amit Sadh) does fall into the abyss of bigotry Though he is finally given a chance to redeem himself, it's too late. A dream has al ready died, though another one is reborn.

Kai Po Che is about the shared aspirations of three friends : the reckless and devil-may-care cricketer lshaan (Sushant Singh Rajput in a remarkable film debut), his caut ious, shy friend Govind (Raj Kumar Yadav) and their somewhat confused friend Omi, the son of a liberal temple priest who tilts towards Hindu radicalism more out of an economic necessity than a ideological imperative

Into these lives, screenplay writers Abhishek Kapoor, Chetan Bhagat, Pubali Chaudhuri and Supratik Sen introduce a socio -political perspective that is rare in mainstream Hindi cinema

There are many reasons why Kai Po Che is one of the most compelling products of the post-renaissance era in Indian cinema To my mind its greatest achievement is its fusion of"ci nema" and "history': a synthesis that fi l mmakers today would consider unpalatable for viewers Hence they serve up the junkfood equival ent of cinema. Quickly ingested and easi ly forgotten.

Not this time!

In Kai Po Che, the characters and situ ations created to bring out the personality conflicts emerge from the two crises poi nts i n Gujarat's history - the 2001 earthquake and the post-Godhra carnage in 2002.

The sustained pal pable tension of the riots towards the concluding lap of this riveting ta l e is the stuff t h at great cinema is made of

The virtues of the film are many: songs (AmitTrivedi) and background music (Hitesh Sonik) that seem to echo the protagoni sts' inner world without making a song and dance, cinematography by Anay Goswami and editi ng by Deepa Bhatia that says it all w ithout a singl e shot being redundant, and most of all, a terrific gallery of actors who make the brotherly bonding look so rea l you feel other cel ebrated films about male bonding (including Abh i shek Kapoor 's Rock On) were mere teasers

And yet to describe Kai Po Che as a film on male bondi ng wou ld be akin to treating Dr Zhivago as a film on the med ica l profession.

Taking the core idea from Bhagat's novel, Kapoor weaves together a tapestry of thoughts, characters and lives that embrace an entire ethos and cu lture without sacrificing individua lity.

Fearless and al most flawless, Kai Po Che bubbles over with the warmth of lived-in experiences and with centra l performances that are so unstudied you suspect the actors were born to play these parts

Among the trio, Am it Sadh as the fence-sitter turned Hindu radical gets into the skin of his character and remains there t i ll the end, and not for the first time He was also admirable as a narrator-journalist in Ka b eer Kaushik's Maximum. Here's an actor who deserves a lot more.

Raj Kumar Yadav as the voice of reason among the trio of friends yet again displays his amazing ability to come to grips w ith the body language, speech and inner wor ld of the peopl e he p l ays I've not seen any actor deliver his l i nes in recent memory so naturally without artificial punctuation. Raj Kumar's triumph is the triumph of refined acting in Hi ndi c inema.

And let's not forget the ta l ented the spontaneous Amrita Puri as l shaan's sister She is at the periphery of the pivotal axis and yet makes her presence felt with such an endearing lack of van it y.

As for Sushant Si ngh Rajput, the script favours his character. And he repays the compliment right back, with bonu s. With his compe ll ing screen presence and an abi lity to render r estl ess energy in a rest rained pattern, he immediately establi sh es himself as one of the most articulate actors of the post-Ranbir Kapoor generation

His relationship with the cr icketing prodigy Ali (Digvijay Deshmukh) is in many ways the core issue of the m u ltifarious plot. You cheer for lshaan's streetwise heroism i n a way you haven't cheered in a l ong while

Take a bow, Abhishek Kapoo r You have proven that Rock On was no flash in the pan. Kai Po Che takes the theme of friendship to another l evel.

Yeh dosti hum nahin todenge, indeed Sometimes the best of friendships get swept away in politics and history It takes a master storyteller to remind us that cinema is finally a mir ror of forces which have a bearing on l ife

Kai Po Che just tempts me to tell the escapist mer chants ofBollywood to go fly a kite

SUBHASH K JHA