2018 - Everyone is a hero

 

Nowadays, an Indian movie having a humungous budget of 300-500 crore seems very normal and acceptable but sometimes the final product doesn’t live up to the amount spent on its making. There are various factors for that and some of them have been mentioned in my previous post.

Out of nowhere in May’23, comes a Malayalam movie called 2018 which literally breaks all the chains and makes the entire world believe that a movie made on a meagre budget of ₹20 crores can actually look this good in reality. Also, the fact that it ended up earning close to ₹200 crores blew my mind.

With minimal CGI and VFX, director Jude Anthany Joseph successfully creates a calamity with practical effects and displays it with such ease by keeping the film’s actual content in mind. The movie might start slow and may take some amount of time for character introduction and building up the world for these characters to cross paths in unimaginable, life-changing ways but once it completes that, you’ll surely be glued to your seat.  

The idea to dive into such a sensitive concept which is pretty fresh in people’s mind and to end up making the viewers experience cathartic is something that Jude perfected with this film.

The 2018 floods that happened in Kerala had a horrendous effect on the state. Kerala, a state known for its beauty and also nicknamed as God’s Own Country, faced one of the most brutal effects of massive rainfall and floods. With a total loss of approx. ₹40,000 crore, close to 483 deaths occurredd and 15 missing cases have been lodged. This is an estimated sum. A similar calamity had happened in Kerala in 1924 known as the Great Flood of 99. According to the sources, 2018 is considered to be far worse than its predecessor.

Now being a Malayali, who lives in Mumbai, I’m very much acquainted with floods. Mumbai has had multiple such cases and 1 such incident is the 26^th July 2005 Floods which had a massive range of destruction and citizens of Mumbai were stranded in unimaginable places with unforgettable experience.

What I saw in 2018, partly reminded me of the problems faced by people during the 2005 floods. The movie makes you realize how at this point people forget their religious bias and genuinely put efforts in helping people. 2018 also shows how people actually sacrifice themself in order to let others survive the calamity.

Let’s talk about the cast, in the lead we have our Minnal Murali – Tovino Thomas who plays the character of Anoop, ends up stealing the show whenever he is in the frame. But that’s where the movie doesn’t stop, it continues to show how everyone is a hero as taglined in the film.  Lal who plays Mathachan, has 2 sons and how they disregard their internal family issues in order to emerge as the greatest help for people stuck in this calamity. The film literally depicts what it means to be a hero.

There are scenes wherein you end up teary-eyed. Vineeth Sreenivasan plays the role of an IT guy who is on his way to meet his wife and ailing mother. While coming back due to the calamity, he and one of his seat partner hitch hike to their respective destination in a lorry. The Lorry driver is hesitant, impatient and arrogant but looking at the current condition, he agrees to give these people a lift. Throughout the journey, we see how both Vineeth and the Lorry Driver actually end their respective, individual family problems and seem grateful that they have a family and that they’re safe.

This simply makes me wonder how we, as human beings take the smallest and simplest things that life can offer as granted.

2018 ends on a sacrificial note which left me speechless for a long time. There is a poetic pause at the end where there are no dialogues just plain simple silence that just hits hard. With flowing tears, you try to face reality but there is a part of you that will never recover.

A feeling of empathy lurked around me. The lack of gratitude towards my well-being made me embarrassed. I’m not sure how to write about it but we all should be grateful towards what we have. In search of wealth, success and materialistic pleasures, we’ve lost the real, true meaning of what humanity is and such calamities end up being a lesson for the entire mankind that only if we help each other, we survive to see a new morning.

A lot of such countless calamities and attacks have brought our nation together but the real question is what if we continue to live like that?

What if we genuinely make efforts to help others with no expectations?

Its something to think about…….

 

This movie is available on SonyLIV  as of now in 5 languages viz. Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada. Please watch it preferably in Malayalam to get the authentic experience.