Working in healthcare is not easy. Healthcare profesisonals have always surprised me, and some of those moments have been the closest I have been to real 'miracle workers'. These folks, the work they do, actually saves lives. Working in healthcare is to dedicate one's life to a lifetime of service to others. And there will be days that service could be a personal sacrifice to the caregiver. There have been numerous stories , movies and tales of the heroism shown by doctors , nurses and paramedical officers.
Malayalam movie too finally got a movie which told a story of heroism. The movie is called Virus (2019), and it describes the events of the 2018 Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala, India. Although the event itself got wide media coverage in India and abroad, a detailed telling of the actual events has been missing till date. Here, one can finally get to see a near-reality replay of the events.
First of all, a fantastic cast. One of those rare Malayalam movies which has starpower, but no overbearing superstar syndrome. Spot on casting, every actor is apt for their characters. Every characther in the movie is based on on or more real life persons. Second, there is a hollywood like treatment to everything; the story, the cinematography, music, and dialogues. Edge of the seat tension grips the full movie, with a little bit of humour and hope sprinkled all over. The overall feeling is of optimism, and a call to come and work together in times of need.
The story picks up half way through the outbreak, and employs numerous flashbacks to connect the stories of all the characters involved. A fantastic approach, but I felt some flashbacks were not obvious; there were not enough pointers to convey the actual time of that story unfolding. Could have been a little more efficient. But the highlight is when the healthworkers come together to build the full chain of events , linking all of the victims together, starting from patient 0, to everyone affected during the outbreak. They do this by interviewing all the survivors, bystanders , hospital staff and random villagers. They also go through hours of CCTV footage, and even look at their social media and phone usage !
It is good to see malayalam movies again exploring the genre of real-life events, and telling real stories, of real people, instead of fantasy. Expecting more to come, but it should not take a virus outbreak to inspire movie makers.
Virus is streaming on Amazon prime now. Go watch it, before it incubates.
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