Coronavirus: Films that talk about pandemic and viruses

The Western filmmakers have made films on mysterious pandemics and viruses that threatened to destroy humanity. The top two films that are most discussed and written about are Hollywood’s Contagion and Virus that is from India.  Film critic Aseem Chhabra says, ``the most obvious  film that accurately  describes the current state of affairs how the coronavirus has spread-is  Steven  Soderbergh’s Contagion. it is a brilliant thriller, But people should also watch  the Malayalam film Virus directed by  Aashiq Abu. It is a well made strong film and a very effective thriller.’’

While Hollywood actually has dealt with this subject directly, Indian cinema has used natural calamities mostly as the backdrop. Film journalist  Indramohan Pannu says, ``we make cinemas only on social and political issues and have highlighted social stigmas in our cinemas so there is not much of such cinemas in Hindi that were made in the early 60s and 70s. That was the time of social change and we focused on that more.’’

Like Dharmendra and Meena Kumari’s film Phool Aur Pathar had the backdrop of the plague. Directed by OP Ralhan, the film was a story of a burglar who enters a house abandoned by a family after plague and finds a widowed daughter in law played by Meena Kumari who he helps to recover from illness.

Then there was Gulzar’s Khushboo adapted from Sarat Chandra Chattapodhyay’s book Panditmashai which again has plague as one the characters that brings Jeetendra and Hema Malini together.

Khwaja Ahmed Abbas who always picked up social issues directed Dharti Ke Laal which had the backdrop of the devastating Bengal Famine which killed about three million people in 1943. Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar touched on the great depression and highlighted the social divide between the rich and the poor.

There were number of films based on floods and were inspired from Rabindranath Tagore’s book Naukadoobi. There were films like Milan starring Sunil Dutt and Nutan, Ghungat directed by Ramanand Sagar with Bina Rai in the lead was at the backdrop of floods that devastated the country. In the recent case is Abhishek Kapoor’s Kedarnath which was based on the cloud burst that washed away hundreds of people.

Film Historian Pavan Jha has an interesting observation to make on the topic. He said, “Natural Calamities have always been an interesting plot point of our Cinema and Literature, Sometimes at the core and sometimes to setup the ambience and some times to drive the climax on a High. Take the case of V. Shantaram's Classic Padosi which had a major flood in climax in the form of a crisis to overcome and enables the film's culmination on a High....V Shantaram again used the real historic events of Natural Calamity in China during World War in his another classic Dr. Kotnis ki Amar Kahaani.

He further adds, ``The Lost and Found formula in Hindi cinema also found its ally in Natural Calamities, like Yash Chopra's Waqt used the event of Earthquake for the separation, or for that matter Gulzar's Angoor where the sea storm is used for separation..  ..Gulzar's other film Khushboo (which was based on Sarat chandra's Pandit Moshay) also used the Plague as major plot point in its story telling.. In recent times films like  Emran Hashmi's Tum Mile or Kedarnath used the real life events of disaster”

The Zombies and The Virus

The recently made film Rise of the Zombie starring Luke Kenny revolves around a photographer going to into the jungles gets bitten by the bug and turns into a zombie. Then there was Sachin Joshi starrer Azaan  which dealt with the subject of virus  created by a man and the biological war to destroy it.

AR  Murugodoss directed Seventh Sense starring Suriya and Shruti Hasan talks about Chinese virus.  The story goes like this.

Ajay Devgn starrer Qayamat-City Under threat focused on a biological war. Writer Suparn Varma says, ``Qayamat dealt with an imminent threat in which a deadly virus was weaponised as a tool of biological warfare and we had made it waterborne which once the victim was infected with would become airborne and kill within a matter of few minutes. ‘’

He further adds, ``The coronavirus is like hell on earth, it’s invisible, takes 10-21 days to become symptomatic. Hopefully we will find a vaccine soon and our species as a whole will make through this ticking time bomb.’’