Review: Parked (2010)
Cast: Colm Meaney, Colin Morgan, Milka Ahlroth
Director: Darragh-Byrne
Country: Ireland | Finland
Genre: Drama
Official Trailer: Here
Editor’s Note: Parked opened in limited release on Friday November 28th
Following in the footsteps of the country’s government, Irish cinema has struggled desperately to come to terms with the current financial crisis, filmic representations of the nation in the wake of its downfall ranging from, at the top of the scale, the not-quite-greats Citadel and Pilgrim Hill to, at the sadly far more populous bottom, the incomprehensibly awful Charlie Casanova and The Tiger’s Tail. It’s no easy task to represent: the fears and angers of a society stripped of the greatest fiscal prestige in its history and relegated to the role of helpless child in the international playground are difficult to distil, the sheer passion for the subject so many filmmakers exhibit spilling over into histrionic abrasion.
…it’s Parked’s most resounding achievement to allow him the space to prove his potential as dramatic leading man. Above all else he embodies the hurt of such peripheral citizens: never begging, never pathetic, he accepts each rejection for employment and government aid with the sullen face of man long resigned to his sad circumstances.
Putting a face to the fallout of the crisis, Darragh Byrne casts Colm Meaney as his protagonist Fred Daly, an Irish émigré returned from England to find the harsh times he left behind in the 1980s have since returned. Long has Meaney had the face not of a movie star, but rather of a neighbour; to see him left without a home is as to see, as it were, a real person. Further social issues find uneasily convenient representation in Colin Morgan’s Cathal, the 21-year old heroin addict whose car shares a remote parking lot with Fred’s, the two eventually becoming friendly over the course of several weeks in the cold Irish winter. First-time scribe Ciaran Creagh offers little in the way of storytelling surprises, his characters moving predictably yet assuredly forward toward their simply symbolic end.
Popping up intermittently in assorted awful action movies of late—see The Cold Light of Day and Special Forces for recent examples—Meany is rarely afforded the opportunity to exhibit his true talents before the camera. Though his comedic offerings in films the like of The Snapper and The Van will, perhaps rightly, remain the source of his greatest fame, it’s Parked’s most resounding achievement to allow him the space to prove his potential as dramatic leading man. Above all else he embodies the hurt of such peripheral citizens: never begging, never pathetic, he accepts each rejection for employment and government aid with the sullen face of man long resigned to his sad circumstances. Morgan, saddled with much of Creagh’s mild humour—efficient if almost cursory—does a fine job with a hugely problematic character; we know from the get-go where Cathal is headed, his function as a cipher for social comment rarely allowing him the space to breath as a compassionate character.
Perhaps the film is such a disappointment for the potential it betrays: Byrne’s direction practically bulges with the desire to break free and lend added expressivity to the staid story; Meaney’s emotionally-rendered facial subtleties go wasted on a character whose arc seems clear from almost the first frame.
Not without its shades of noteworthy visual composure, Parked has more to say—or perhaps more fittingly more of interest to say—by way of its aesthetic than by its narrative. Straying away from the usual sights of inner-city Dublin, Byrne makes expressive use of the coastline’s rugged desolation, the unwelcoming granite of Fred’s impromptu “neighbourhood” and the omnipresent gloom of cloudy skies contributing a stark greyness to the man’s life. Only in the crimson furnishings of a potential love interest’s house can he find any sense of place. Byrne guides the camera with clarity and purpose, economic in his direction but not without personality. It’s a shame that he’s so tied to the weaknesses of a substandard script; such is the impression of his better shots that a better story would surely have brought forth a more strikingly visual experience.
It’s a sadness that a film with the weaknesses of Parked could be said to be among the better of Irish representations of the financial crisis. Meaney and Morgan work as well as they’re able with characters tethered to easy metaphorical function, caught as they are in a narrative of such reductive cliché. Perhaps the film is such a disappointment for the potential it betrays: Byrne’s direction practically bulges with the desire to break free and lend added expressivity to the staid story; Meaney’s emotionally-rendered facial subtleties go wasted on a character whose arc seems clear from almost the first frame. It’s an uneasy cocktail of stylistic and narrative aspirations, caught between an art house sensibility and an unimaginatively simplistic manner of storytelling. Eventually, Parked is simply torn apart by its disparate intentions, various strands tugging in opposite directions until everything collapses in a fragmented heap. Perhaps on that level it’s a better expression of its home country than it seems.
