Film: City of Gold, Cast: Seema Biswas, Sachin Khedekar, Directed by: Mahesh V Manjrekar, Duration: 140 mins, Rating:  * * * 1 / 2

Actor turned director Mahesh Manjrekar’s City of Gold is the Hindi version of the Marathi film Lalbaug Parel that was released a couple of weeks earlier. Manjrekar has already made a mark in Marathi cinema with films like Me Shivaji Raje Bhonsle Boltoy (about the identity of the Marathi manoos) and Shikshanacha Aicha Gho (about the education system). This time he has travelled back in time to revisit the issue of the mill workers that had taken Bombay (as it was known then) by storm. It is a hard hitting film that touches your heart and clearly it his best accomplishment of the three in terms of finesse and story telling.
Narrated in flashback, the story is adapted from a play by Jayant Pawar. It is about a middle-lower class family whose elderly bread earner works in the mill. His wife (Seema Biswas) is having a hard time coping with life - their eldest son is a budding writer but that doesn’t earn him anything, the second one is a good for nothing and fond of cricket while the youngest is an angry young man (Karan Patel) of sorts who gets caught with the underworld and the daughter (Veena Jamkar) has an affair with a young man from the neighbourhood only to be dumped. In other words, life is not exactly a bed to roses for this family. The backdrop is the handloom mills that were shutdown and became a golden goose for real estate agents. Sachin Khedekar plays the union leader. There is also another character reminiscent of Datta Samant, the fiery leader who was assassinated.
Manjrekar shows considerable restraint in some of the scenes – there is the odd one in which he goes over the top but on the whole this effort needs to be applauded.
The cast has done a commendable job especially Siddarth Jadhav who steals the show although his role is not that big. Veena Jamkar and Karan Patel are also impressive while the likes of Seema Biswas and Sachin Khedekar deliver what is expected of them.  City of Gold is certainly one of the more memorable films in recent times and hence it is worth a watch.