Rock On!!, the story of four friends who ate, breathed, slept and made rock music together but cant sustain that dream brings some beautiful vignettes of cinema that treats realism with a delicacy of handling a touch-me-not.

This is the world of young boys who can die for the music they make, a world of idealism and passion, a world within this world of harsh realities. The twain engage and youthful ideologies find it hard to survive in the real world. Dreams shatter and lives separate. But life has a weird way of moving on despite everything and it does. Until one day when it comes full circle.

A coming-of-age film, Rock On!! is in many ways DCH retold but with wider implications and unique voice. The biggest achievement of this small film is it brings realism into mainstream story-telling. And makes significant leaps with it. It is a sanitised reality, a feel-good space that one takes as seriously as it is meant to be taken.

The backdrop the film chooses for itself is of a rock music band but it avoids going into the darker territories that rock stands for. The angst, the intensity, the dual-vision world-view seen through a constant purple haze, the headiness of rock and its illegitimate relationship with drugs, booze, substances that give a new meaning to expression and vice-versa. Rock On!! creates an imaginary world taking the ‘heroism’ of rockstars, passion of the music and leaving out everything that is dark or decadent about it. It places itself in a context which is in between commercial, feel-good cinema and arthouse realism and makes an interesting recipe for the new youth. To its utmost credit it does a commendable job of telling a story in a setting more suited to pop than rock with a fervour and sincerity usually lacking in such attempts. But for a film which has rock at its soul, the youthfulness of the lyrics, tunes and instrumentation remind one of college bands,...

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