Rating: ★★★ ½ Studio/presenter:East West Films Producers:Nitin Adsul, Sachin Adsul , Rupesh Mahajan, Darrel Cox, Clark McMillian Director: Nitin Adsul Writer: Nitin Adsul, Clark McMillian, Darrel Cox Dialogues: Mayur Deval Music: Shashank Powar, Greg Sims Cinematographer (DOP): Sanjay Khanjode Genres:  Drama Censor: U/A Duration: 130 Min. Cast:Kishor Kadam, Smita Tambe, Saurabh Gokhale, Gayatri Deshmukh, Anshuman Vichare, Navani Parihar, Raja Bundela, Ravi Bhartiya, Yash Pande Movie Review by: Ulhas Shirke

It is not an easy job to bind the people from different states and culture together, through an emotion filled film’s story. But, US based Marathi filmmaker Nitin Adsul has succeeded in doing so. Through his latest Marathi film  ‘Partu’,  made under the banner of his US based East West Films, Nitin has presented a true story of his father’s uncle, a farmer, by profession and living in Nagar district of Maharashtra. The period of this story has been set on the backdrop of rural areas of both in Maharashtra and Rajasthan, during the period 1968 to 1985.

Laxman (Kishore Kadam)  a farmer just managing to provide enough food to his family, with  farming, finds a little boy on the streets of a village in Nagar district. He provides shelter to this boy, along with his two children, much against the wish of his wife ( Smita Tambe) . The boy is actually from a village in Rajasthan ,who is lost at Ahmednagar Railway station  missing his uncle in the crowd. But, the name of the village pronounced by the boy, is not properly understood by Laxman and he calls it some other place. Even his name Prithvi, is understood by the farmer as Partu.  Laxman tries to locate the village with the help of village postman, but is unable to locate it.

So, Partu becomes a close member of the farmer’s family, having lived with them for 17 long years. Laxman also gets him married to his friend’s daughter ( Gayatri Soham). Later, when it’s time to go on a pilgrimage, the family happens to travel to Rajasthan also. It is here that Lakxman gets a message through a messenger of almighty, to move to a particular village in Rajasthan,  to fulfill his wish of  returning Partu, to his biological parents. With lots of hurdles, he finally reaches the destination, in the film’s climax. But, it is Partu, who takes his own decision in the end.

The film has been very well presented with proper planning, being a true story. At the end of the film, the director has not forgotten to show the audience, the real life people, on whom the film has been made. And, that is the best part of this film. There are very few flaws noticed in the film’s story; but this being a true story, they can be ignored.  There are many emotion filled scenes in the film and the versatile artistes like Kishore Kadam, Smita Tambe, Saurabh Gokhale and Gayatri Soham Deshmukh have given full justice to their respective roles in this film. For Saurbh Gokhale this is a good debut in films. He has done one face to face scene of confrontation with versatile actor Kishore Kadam very well. Anshuman Vichare in the role of a private vehicle driver, has generated some humour, in post interval session, in this otherwise touching emotion filled film.

Music is just apt for the film’s story and two songs have been picturised very well. One of them is picturised on the young couple and the other towards the end, depicting the Rajasthani culture. Good photography, excellent background music and perfect sound design are other plus points of this brilliant film.

The overall film is very appealing and touches the heart of the audience, because of its emotion filled screenplay. It also binds Maharashtra and Rajasthan in an emotive cord .