2018

2018: When Humanity Rose Above the Waters

Some films tell us about disasters. Some make us witness them. 2018: Everyone Is a Hero makes us remember what we are capable of when disaster strips away everything that normally separates us.

Jude Anthany Joseph's 2023 Malayalam film recreates the devastating Kerala floods of 2018 through a collection of ordinary lives. There is no single superhero at its centre. Instead, there is Anoop, a former soldier carrying the burden of his past; Shaji, an apparently timid man who discovers courage when circumstances demand it; Nixon, dreaming of a life abroad while struggling to understand his fisherman father; Ramesh and many others whose lives begin in the familiar landscape of ordinary Kerala concerns. They argue, fall in love, worry about money, carry resentments and pursue small dreams. They are simply living.

And then the water comes.

The brilliance of 2018 is that the disaster does not arrive merely as spectacle. It arrives as a great equaliser.

The distinctions that seemed important yesterday suddenly become meaningless. The rich and poor need the same boat. The educated and uneducated need the same helping hand. Religion, caste, occupation, political differences and personal grudges lose their importance when the water rises to the roof.

The film captures the terrifying psychology of a disaster particularly well. At first there is disbelief. Then inconvenience. Then fear. Then the awful realisation that the familiar world is disappearing beneath the water.

And when institutions and infrastructure are overwhelmed, something remarkable happens.

Ordinary people become extraordinary.

Fishermen take their boats into currents that could kill them. Neighbours rescue strangers. Young men risk their lives for people they have never met. People who were quarrelling yesterday suddenly stand shoulder to shoulder. The fisherman who once seemed insignificant becomes a lifeline. The reluctant man discovers courage. The frightened man acts despite his fear.

That is why the film's title is so meaningful.

Everyone is a hero.

Not because everyone performs some spectacular act, but because heroism becomes a possibility available to ordinary human beings when somebody else needs them.

There are moments when 2018 comes close to becoming conventional disaster cinema, particularly in its emotional manipulation and large-scale spectacle. But its emotional centre remains powerful because the disaster actually happened. Kerala remembers those waters. The boats, helicopters, rescue operations, flooded homes and desperate families are not imaginary cinematic inventions. They are part of a collective memory.

And perhaps that is what makes the film deeply moving. Disasters reveal something uncomfortable about civilisation. We spend our lives building boundaries around ourselves: my house, my family, my community, my money, my status, my religion, my problems.

Then nature arrives and reminds us how fragile all those boundaries are.

But 2018 also offers a more hopeful lesson. A disaster can destroy infrastructure, homes and lives. Yet it can also awaken something buried within human beings: courage, compassion, sacrifice, cooperation and an instinctive refusal to leave another person behind.

The floodwaters rose beyond anything people imagined. And in response, the human spirit rose too.

Perhaps that is the final lesson of 2018. Sometimes humanity discovers its greatest strength only when everything else has been taken away.

A catastrophe can bring out the worst in people. But sometimes, when circumstances demand the impossible, ordinary men and women reach somewhere beyond their known limits and do things they never believed they were capable of doing. And that is strangely inspiring.

Because perhaps the greatest human achievement is not surviving the storm. It is discovering, in the middle of the storm, how much humanity we still possess.