Like so many wars, it begins suddenly – and due to an issue that could easily be resolved.
Software professional Eshwar (Harish Kalyan) and his pregnant wife Aathika (Indhuja Ravichandran) rent the first floor of a house in suburban Chennai. The family that rents the ground floor, led by Ilamparuthi (MS Bhaskar), is welcoming – until Eshwar buys a car to ensure Aathika’s comfort and takes over the slot given to Ilamparuthi’s bike.
Ilamparuthi is incensed at Eshwar’s gumption. He demands that Eshwar park his vehicle outside the gate. Eshwar reasons that a car is bigger than a bike. So Ilamparuthi gets a car too.
The competitiveness that rages between the men is initially comical until it gets serious, and then ugly. The ensuing conflagration also scalds Aathika, Ilamparuthi’s wife Selvi (Rama Rajendra) and Ilamparuthi’s daughter Aparna (Prathana Nathan).
Ramkumar Balakrishnan’s Parking (2023) is an engaging game of one-upmanship that folds into a battle over parking space larger truths about cramped living conditions in Indian cities. The Tamil film is available on JioHotstar.
Balakrishnan’s directorial debut won three honours at the recently announced National Film Awards. Parking was named the best Tamil movie. Balakrishnan shared the award for Best Screenplay with Baby’s writer Sai Rajesh Neelam. MS Bhaskar also shared the Best Supporting Actor award with Vijayaraghavan for Pookkaalam.
The script deftly brings out the differences between Ilamparuthi, a traditional family man, and the aspirational Eshwar. Bhaskar has a reputation for being fair-minded until he isn’t, just as Eshwar should be the rational one, until he isn’t either.
MS Bhaskar and Harish Kalyan turn out terrific performances, sticking with their characters arcs even when the movie stretches on for too long. Some of the plot turns appear to be too exaggerated and outlandish – but then city dwellers have been known to behave in bizarre ways to protect their perceived rights.
Despite avoidable flabbiness, Parking is a crafty examination of obduracy. Replace parking with any other problem and the film still works as a study of how strangers find it hard, if not impossible, to share common spaces.
Parking is going to be remade into at least four Indian languages, including Hindi. Imagine setting the film in Mumbai – it won’t be anything less than a carnage.
