An incomplete picture of a city that could have been

City of Gold

Director - Mahesh Manjrekar

Writing Credits - Based on the play Adhantar by Jayant Pawar, Story by Mahesh Manjrekar

Music - Ajit Parab

Cast - Satish Kaushik, Seema Biswas, Karan Patel, Siddharth Jadhav, Ankush Chaudhary, Sachin Khedekaar, Kashmira Shah, Sameer Dharmadhikari, Shashank Shende, Anushka Dandekar, Veena Jhamkar.

What goes for the film – Good performances and layered characterization.

What goes against the audience – Lack of examination of larger social and political realities.

Cinemaa Opinion – It would have struck a chord maybe twenty years back, not in the present times. Scroll down for a detailed review.

Every great city is built on a terrible truth. This is the premise of Mahesh Manjrekar’s latest film City of Gold. How true it is, is a debate for another day and space, but the fact remains that on the face of it, the truth, Manjrekar speaks of is indeed quite terrible.

Set in the 80’s, City of Gold explores the famous textile strike of 1982 that left more than 25,000 mill workers unemployed and struggling for life and livelihood, some which continue to do so today. The film tries to bring alive their battle for survival against the odds of poverty in a fast-changing political landscape.

Based on Adhantar, a play written by journalist Jayant Pawar, the film is also meant to be a song of pain for Mumbai as it was, or could have been if not for this event.

The film revolves around the Dhuri family, a microcosm of every such family thus struggling. The family of six is steeped in a miserable struggle for survival with each individual trying to grope with fate and circumstances. The father is a retired mill worker while the eldest son is a sensitive playwright, the second son a cricket fanatic, the daughter a lively firebrand and the youngest a good-hearted goon. It speaks of their lives and circumstances as affected by the mill worker’s strike and the mill owner’s apathetic persecution. Through the travails of this family, Manjrekar weaves a heart-rending saga of the underbelly of Mumbai before its skyline began to compete with Manhattan.

The film has its heart in the right place but the viewpoint is biased. Singular rather. It is from a singular perspective that the maker tells his story and inevitably the breadth and the impact is narrow. The trajectory the life of the Dhuri family takes is deeply disturbing and the constant agony of their suffering is palpable. But the film takes an emotional stand alone, refusing to engage in the politics of the times. This reduces the import of the film from a heart-felt social comment to a mere delineation of the after-effects, an approach that takes away from the tragedy that was real and changed the economy, face and soul of Mumbai.

This lack of engagement makes the voice deeply personal and sentimental. The canvas is sharply divided and colors are black and white, almost reminiscent of the sensibility of films like Coolie. The forces of the coming capitalism are painted in full villainy and the victimization of the underdog in large brush strokes of pathos and pity. The degeneration of individual members of the family, their relationships and children is moving but without the perspective of the social and political scenario their suffering is rendered relative rather than representative. An engagement with the larger picture, a weighing of the pros and cons was a requirement that would have served to add many layers of meaning to the heart-breaking suffering of the millions involved that the Dhuri family is representative of. This lack of a studied or expansive approach also harms the significance of a film largely positioned as a social statement on not only the history but also the humanity of its times.

However, within its chosen purview, the film weaves nuances of relationships and character growth with sensitivity. Mother-son, father-daughter, brother-sister, husband-wife relationships are depicted with a fine alacrity that is touching at times. The film delves in grey shades with its principal characters and the take-away is relatibility and also an understanding of individual suffering within their own contexts of poverty and pain.

The film offers some hard-hitting performances from the ensemble cast namely Sachin Khedekar, Seema Biswas, Satish Kaushik, Karan Patel, Siddharth Jadhav, Veena Jhamkar, Shashank Shende and Sameer Dharmadhikari. The director brings alive lower middle class life through realistic characterizations, mannerisms, dialects and lifestyles establishing that he knows his mileu well. However, the tone and tenor of the film is outdated, the high melodrama and sentimentalisation making it a film that is way behind its times even though the issue it speaks of may still be relevant.

This, along with its deeply personal voice rejecting ideological engagement makes it a limited experience, which is rather unfortunate in a film that attempts to speak of social justice and sensitization to the issues of lower classes.