Many thoughts on #Parasakthi:
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At one point in Parasakthi, someone observes that language isn’t merely a tool to express thought. It is thought itself. Languages aren’t clothes you can change for convenience and still remain the same person underneath. Each language alters how you see, feel, and exist. To suffocate one language or impose another, then, isn’t a superficial change; it is a demand for inner transformation. It is a government order for a change in your identity, in your inner essence.
During the anti-Hindi agitations of the 1960s, people protested, screamed, died. And that's understandable because what was at stake wasn’t vocabulary, but existence itself. Perhaps that’s why Sudha Kongara’s Parasakthi uses a primal element, fire, as a central motif. Everything burns here: trains, buildings, people. The call to resistance, “Thee paravattum”, captures how protest spreads, how anger and belief connect from person to person, and how it can become uncontrollable once ignited.
I love languages. I speak Tamil, Telugu, and English. So when I learned that Parasakthi was about the importance of preserving languages, I'll be lying if I said I wasn't already on its side. However, I wanted the film not just to assert its politics, but to move me. I wanted it to offer heroism, grief, catharsis, not merely as ideas, but as affecting experiences. I wanted Parasakthi to be more of a film than a slogan. I’m not sure it is.
From early on, Chezhiyan’s (Sivakarthikeyan) tears never became mine. A protest he leads burns a train; a celebratory song follows; and immediately after, he’s told someone died. His breakdown is sudden. His decision to shut down the movement is decisive. I understood it, but I didn’t feel it. I figured it would come later on perhaps, once I understood these people better. However, in this film, moments keep registering as information, not as emotion.
This pattern repeats. When Chezhiyan later suffers a major personal loss, his recovery feels oddly swift. Even when the antagonist Thiru (Jayam Ravi) claims responsibility to his face, Chezhiyan responds not with personal rage but ideological conviction. Is this a man driven more by politics than private devastation? Doesn't this contradict the emotional foundation the film itself establishes early on, when this man is so shaken by the death of a stranger?
Thiru suffers from similar problems. We learn of his abandonment, his loss of a shooting finger, his years of punishment and retraining, but we barely see what these experiences do to him. His character, his violence, is almost cinematic, in this film rooted in real trauma. Civilian deaths accumulate easily, cheaply. Death itself stops feeling huge.
Where Parasakthi briefly relaxes, something human and beautiful emerges. Sree Leela’s Ratnamala feels alive; she's feisty without losing her joy. A tender love-reveal involving her, Chezhiyan, and his family works really well in isolation. Yet even here, the film rushes past emotional process. Her anger about Chezhiyan's secret, for instance, is treated as an opportunity for a love song.
The film is dense with historical references, as you can imagine. Murasoli, Karunanidhi, Anna, Indira Gandhi... At times, I thought it felt more like documentation than dramatisation. And this distance is the film’s core problem. Parasakthi speaks eloquently, repetitively, about language as thought, identity, soul. But without emotional care, all the fire I saw on screen didn't ever reach my insides.
Only if you had seen the movie properly, the message from minute 1 was clear. Against IMPOSITION of the language not the LANGUAGE in itself.
People need to use their brains sometime 🤦🏽♂️
Calling this Hindi hatred already shows you watched the film with prejudice, not context.
The film #Parashakthi is about #HindiImposition, not hatred.. so much that it literally opens with a disclaimer. If you missed that, that’s on you, not the movie.
“Outdated” and “toxic”?
History doesn’t expire just because it makes you uncomfortable. This film revisits historical political events (even if dramatized), not a feel good musical. If your idea of cinema is only songs, heroes and boot-licking narratives, maybe political films aren’t for you. And no, this has nothing to do with propaganda films you’re trying to conveniently drag in.
You say you “take pride in every Indian language” but fail to respect our fight to protect Tamil from forced imposition. That contradiction alone says everything.
//Appeasing Tamil centric politics// ?
There’s a dialogue in the film: “டெல்லி தான் இந்தியாவா?”
Your post literally proves why that line exists. Why should Tamil political history be muted or softened just because it makes some "all language loving" Hindi speaking audiences uncomfortable?
Since when did telling our history require approval?
And if this was genuinely meant for the director, you could’ve tagged her official handle.
Instead, you used hashtags to farm reach and outrage. That attention seeking is the real toxicity here.
Cinema doesn’t have to unite by erasing resistance.
Sometimes it unites by telling uncomfortable truths. Sit with it bro.
@divakar15887201 This is just a TPDK periyastist party supporters doing this which no Tamil people support.
All Tamil Hindus are at temples celebrating Dusserah. Happy Dusserah by the way😇
@kishan26x https://t.co/C9rgCFHsjT
Hey Intellect💯 . There are already tree safety maintenance programs. Maybe if More than 30 lakhs cases happened like this, They might think about game changing solution
Don't fall for internet propaganda, reality is most women in India are supporting their families, working jobs and still handling household responsibilities. Just because a few cases go viral doesn’t change the fact that they’re carrying a huge load every day.