Nobody minds a kick in the behind to remind us that freedom doesn’t come for free. But when that kick becomes a shove, it is time to protest against movies about socio-political protest.
Director Sudha Kongara, who made that laudable biopic Sorarai Potru and its pale Hindi version Sarfira flounders terribly with this film about the anti-Hindi movement in Tamil Nadu which begins in 1959 and never seems to end.
The long stretches of laughable periodicity had me watching in speechless silence, as Sivakarthikeyan and Atharvaa played brothers, one carefree the other committed to the cause(check out an old Hindi film Anari where Kader Khan and Shashi Kapoor played political polarities) of eradicating Hindi from their homeland.
The thing is: everyone, Hindi-speaking and Tamilians, speaks bad Hindi in Kongara’s film, so it becomes difficult to differentiate between those who are fighting the Rashtra bhasha and those who supporting it.
Adding to the verbal and dramatic chaos is the villain, Thiru (Ravi Mohan), a government stooge who for some reason to do with his mother’s betrayal by a Tamilian (it is mentioned in passing) hates all anti-Hindi protestors and barks orders against them like Ray Stevenson in RRR.
Then there is an overdressed Sreeleela wearing garish sarees and fake jewellery skipping hopping and trying to be as cute as a pigtailed 6-year… no, I take that back. Not even 6-year olds behave so juvenilely.
Sreeleela as Ratnamala provides the same viewing experience as the rest of the cast: unintended laughter.
There is a vital sequence where Chezhiyan (Sivakarthikeyan) is rejected at a job interview for not speaking Hindi without an accent. Funnily, the interviewers speak with thicker accents than the hero who after this snub turns into an anti-Hindi protestor.
So much for commitment to a cause. Parasakhti is like a long overpowering lesson in linguistic chauvinism served up with such anger and bias, the film loses its sting. By all means, we must love our mother tongue. That love for the mother tongue is manifested in a cinematic language so highpitched and garbled the protest loses it sting completely.
