I started 2021, by watching a superhero movie. It was not the recent Spiderman franchise, but a Malayalam language movie called “Minnal Murali“. The story is what is called an origins story. The film is very written, acted, directed, and has a lot of heart. So here is my Minnal Murali review.

The movie has excellent effects and a brilliant music score.

The superhero and his enemy the supervillain, are both living in a fictional village in Kerala. They both are one fine day struck by lightning and gain superpowers. I won’t get into much of the spoilers.

But what the movie did weave in a very beautiful storyline with three main protagonists, the third protagonist being the village or society.

I felt it explores the whole “It takes a village to raise a child” proverb in a great way.

The hero and the villain are treated differently by the villagers even before they get their superpowers. The transformations in the two through nudges to become a good person or to be pushed to the edges by an uncaring and indifferent society are really well done and a uniquely well told origins story.

A simple example is a scene when two characters get struck by lightning at the same time, one is carried to the hospital by the entire village, and the other is largely left by himself to recover. There are several more scenes that tell this story of differences in how the village reacts differently to the different individuals but I won’t write about it as it would contain spoilers.

If you have a Netflix account, please watch this movie. You might even enjoy it more than the latest from the Marvel universes.