Pardon my nerdy brain for drawing a connection between the classic DC comics storyline Flashpoint and Director BSP Varma’s romantic sci-fi flick, Murphy, but I couldn’t help but notice a thematic similarity between the two in the way both these stories utilize the plot device of time travel to emphasize the importance of finding acceptance in grief and the immutability of the flow of time. There is a strong emotional core acting as a foundation in both these stories, established through parental connections—which adds a relatability factor to the narrative itself.
If you are a sci-fi aficionado, then the plot of Murphy will seem extremely simplistic to you, but paired with strong characterization and a taut script, clearing the basics can do wonders—which this Kannada sci-fi drama has managed to do. As an add-on, viewers get treated to the tranquil beauty of the lush Goan countryside, which brings a surreal air to the narrative.
Spoilers Ahead
Murphy Family
Murphy revolves around the theme of paternal love, with three generations of the Murphy family in the narrative focus. The eldest member of the family, Richard Murphy, a septuagenarian, a kindly, spirited fellow, is fond of his old-school transistor radio(of Murphy-built), which he had bought decades ago with his first salary. One of Richard’s favorite pastimes is to listen to the tunes of bygone eras on the radio, and he is extremely protective of the device. His son, Joseph, an accomplished physics professor, shares a strong bond with his father, and after the radio stops working on one occasion, he decides to take it to a mechanic, Dr. Pinto, in order to fix it as a birthday gift to his old man. It should be mentioned that Joseph is a single father, as his wife, Rachel, had left him and their son, a young David. However, David never felt a dearth of love growing up with his father and grandfather, and some of his best memories were made with Joseph by his side. Coincidentally, both Richard and David share the same birthday.
As the movie begins, Joseph goes to Dr. Pinto to pick up Richie’s radio, only to learn from him that it can not be repaired any longer, as the components for it are no longer available. During their conversation, Joe casually mentions time travel to the mechanic, who alludes to Einstein and Lord Krishna’s philosophy to share his opinion—that travelling through time is inconsequential, as everything is destined to function just the way it does. Which is to say it isn’t possible to alter the past to fix the problems for the future. This sets the tone for the rest of the movie, hinting at the events that are going to transpire. Strangely enough, the radio gets repaired on its own, and while returning to his family, Joseph loses his life in a road accident. Richie becomes the only parental figure in David’s life and raises him on his own. Both Richie and David miss Joseph terribly and struggle to move on from his tragic passing even after decades.
How Does Time Travel Work In The Film?
Richard’s Murphy radio, designed by a certain Louis Charles, is no ordinary transmission/receiver device, as due to some cosmic tinkering that isn’t explained in the course of the movie, it is able to send and receive signals from the past. Years later, in the present timeline of 2024, a grown-up college student, David, decides to fix his grandpa’s radio, which was once again experiencing some complications, but ends up exposing it to rain and fails to fix it. Additionally, David and Richie have an argument after David’s girlfriend, Jessie, meets up with him in Richie’s absence, which results in David expressing his inner frustration caused by his inability to cope with his father’s passing.
David’s tinkering with the radio causes it to open a communication channel with a college student, Janani, all the way back in 1996—and making the connection with a World Cup Cricket match broadcast, David realizes that somehow he managed to communicate with someone in the past. After their initial distrust and confusion subside, the duo quickly become good friends. David finds a soul to share his burdens with, and in turn, a loner Janani confides in him about her life and issues. Janani shares that she is deeply in love with Joe, a young professor at her college, but fears sharing her feelings with him. However, after Joe has an accident outside college premises, Janani decides to take care of him, and the duo get close. Eventually, as Janani musters up the courage to profess her love to Joe, she decides to share a poem she had composed for him with David to ask him his opinion. It is only then that David realizes that the person Janani is in love with is none other than Joseph, his father.
How Did David Try to Save His Father?
While David is hit with a sense of immense joy, Janani gets devastated to learn from him that not only did she and Joe never end up together, Joe didn’t get to live a full life in the future. In the present timeline, Joe had a shaky marriage with Rachel, which ended in their separation, and later he met with an accident that claimed his life. A heartbroken Janani decides to distance herself from Joe, in fear of messing things up further, but David encouraged her to follow her heart and share her feelings with Joe. By rummaging through his father’s stuff, David has learned that he too had strong feelings for Janani, but their love never came to fruition. David assumes that, like a domino effect, if significant events from Joe’s life can be altered in the past, he might have lived a much better life and probably wouldn’t have met his end in an accident. It is desperation of David that prompts him to consider that having a life with Janani might spare him from the tragic fate.
Following David’s advice, Janani decides to share her feelings with David, and the duo get into a relationship. At present, David has revealed everything to Jessie and his other friends, and eventually Richie learns about the entirety of it as well, when in an emotionally charged moment, both David and Richie get to hear Joseph’s voice from the other side of the radio transmission. Having the prospect of bringing back Joe, an emotional reconciliation follows between David and his grandfather. In the past, the relationship between Joe and Janani gets approved by both their families, and they prepare to begin a life together by tying the knot. Joe learns about Janani’s friend, David, and gets inspired to name their son (if they end up having one) the same in the future.
Did Joe and Janani End Up Together?
However, as with any time travel sci-fi story, there is a caveat hidden beneath the myriad of possibilities provided by the access to the space-time continuum. If Joseph marries Janani, David will cease to exist, but David was well aware of this fact. He was grateful for the sacrifices his father and grandfather had made to ensure he gets to live a happy life—which is why there was not a moment of hesitation in his mind when his life was on the line in his quest to bring his father back. On the day of Joe and Janani’s marriage, David meets with an accident—probably a temporal/cosmic intervention—and as he is admitted to the hospital, he reveals everything about his inevitable predicament to Jessie and his other friends. They are unable to convince David otherwise and have no other option except to see him slowly meet his end with the completion of Joe and Janani’s marriage.
However, nothing of that sort happens, and David remains alive even days later, which confuses him a lot. Richie appears unwilling to let David use the radio any longer after learning that he had deliberately put himself in harm’s way to bring Joseph back. Richie has made peace with the past and is not willing to ruin the present by clinging on to the bygone era. A confused David realizes that Janani might still be working in the orphanage she grew up in and decides to visit her—what follows is a traumatic, cathartic reunion between two persons whose connection cannot simply be quantified with a particular identity. An elder Janani breaks down seeing David is a splitting image of Joe, and she eventually reveals that she had ended up leaving Joe by running off from the marriage altar. Janani had realized that her marriage with Joe would end up erasing David from existence, and she could never willingly allow that to happen to the person with whom she had formed such a strong bond of friendship. Janani considered the time she had spent with Joe to be worth a lifetime, and held on to the memories through all these days. She had a faint hope that David would come looking for her someday in the future, as she had started feeling a maternal connection to him. Indeed, it was Janani—whose name directly translates to “mother”—who was responsible for David’s survival, as she gave up on her happiness for the sake of his life, and it takes a mother to make a sacrifice of this magnitude. As the movie comes to an end, David brings Janani to their family, and even though her past life wasn’t the kindest to her, there is hope that she will find peace and warmth among David, Richie, Jessie, and others.
In Murphy’s ending, a paradoxical situation remains unresolved, as the question remains what really happened first—was it David’s tinkering with the past, which ended up altering Joe’s life and resulted in David’s birth? Or was it a completely arbitrary event that was caused by the strange radio? In any case, the movie wants viewers to focus less on temporal shenanigans and take notice of the honest, simple emotional trepidations expressed through the passage of time, and the movie perfectly conveys that.
