The name of a 40-year-old film began figuring in discussions of the Hema Committee report, soon after its publication last month whipped up a storm in Kerala. The report’s disclosure of the rampant sexual harassment in Malayalam cinema brought back memories of the 1983 film Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback. The film, made by the legendary filmmaker KG George, uninhibitedly exposed the deplorable scenes behind the silver screen by narrating a young woman’s journey into films, fame, fortune, and misery.
The late director had run into controversy over the film, which appeared to closely resemble the life of actor Shobha, who at the age of 18, had died by suicide only two years earlier, in 1981, after an alleged failed relationship with cinematographer-filmmaker Balu Mahendra.
Like Shobha, Lekha dies. The film begins with her death, laid in a casket all dressed up and pretty as thousands throng the place, and the voice of an unseen news reporter makes a clinical commentary.
Going back a few years, George takes you to Lekha’s tiny home from before she became an actor, where she (a young Nalini) shyly stands before a man who promises her and her mother a chance in films. They take his word for it and go to Madras to have this chance but there is no sign of the man.
Mother and daughter – especially mother (played to perfection by Shubha) – don’t give up, knocking on door after door for chances. In one scene, a couple of producers make their demands explicit — do us ‘favours’ and we will give you a role. The mother and daughter leave, only to fall into a maze of entrapments and manipulative men.
At first, it is a deceptive assistant director (Nedumudi Venu), who lures her to his room promising marriage. Later, middlemen, who offer opportunities in exchange for a night with producers and directors, take advantage of Lekha’s naivety and vulnerable position. In one scene, even the makeup artist pulls away her shawl to dress her, with least regard to her privacy or consent.
Apart from the blatant harassment, the movie also throws light on the presence of controlling stars, Mammootty playing the role of a reigning star who offers Lekha the heroine’s role in his next eight films, but dissuades her from acting in another. This seems like another takeaway from the Hema Committee report that stresses on the existence of a ‘power group’ of 15 men who rule the industry in every possible way. Obviously, the men who ruled back then were a different lot, but the keyword here is ‘power’. There were always men in power, holding the reins.
Lekha for the most part is quiet, letting her mother rule her world and make decisions for her. Mother Visalakshi metamorphosizes from a meek poor woman to a dominating figure for whom money and the bungalow she dreams to build in Madras matter more than anything else, including her daughter’s desires.
When Lekha falls in love with a filmmaker more than twice her age (Bharat Gopy), Visalakshi does everything to stop it, not because he is married and has a child, but because it would mean bad for business. No one would want to cast a married woman, she tells Lekha, who appears to care least for impressions.
The relationship is only a part of the narrative, which further brings out uncomfortable truths about the industry. Gopy, playing the filmmaker Lekha falls in love with, tells her that he knew how a young woman like her would have made it to the movies, making it clear that there was little alternative. In another scene, a woman actor who mostly plays cabaret dances in movies shows Lekha her collection of beautiful sarees, which she could never wear in the films, being allowed only skimpy clothes.
In 1983, it was a bold move to show the industry in all its true colours and George gained prominence as an honest filmmaker. In his review of the film, journalist Sreedhar Pillai called it an imitation of life. It is, he wrote, "a hard-hitting indictment of the life and mores of Kodambakkam, the bustling film city near Madras." He also quoted George as saying, "It is a dog-eats-dog industry, full of whores and pimps."
Forty years later, Sreedhar still counts the film as one of the best by George, a mirror to how the film industry worked and all that happened behind the scenes. “Everyone was real, all the characters you see on the screen. Thilakan (playing a journalist) represented a ‘Nana’ (a popular film magazine) correspondent. Mammootty’s character (Prem Sagar) was a representation of a reigning superstar. KG George showed the reality of cinema. He also added the story of Shobha and Balu into that narrative,” Sreedhar tells us.
Shobha’s mother Prema had at the time raised issue with the film, for portraying her daughter in a bad light, and her, even worse.
But George had never called it Shobha and Balu’s story. In a documentary about his work, Eight and Half Intercuts, George said, “I never looked at it as Balu and Shobha’s story. And Balu was not bothered about it even if it was about his affair with Shobha. He had lent me resources for the film at the time.”
George added, “Ultimately it is a story of pain that I tell. The film tells the truth, but it is painful for many. Yet it is the duty of the artist to tell painful realities.”
Veteran filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan said in the documentary that no other film has portrayed so beautifully what happens in a film studio. He describes a scene in which junior artistes are brought to a film set in a car and a number of them tumble out from the back seat. "It has to be what George saw in Madras when he worked as an assistant to [iconic filmmaker] Ramu Kariyat," Adoor said. This scene appears like yet another depiction of the detailed section in the Hema Committee report on the plight of junior artistes, many of whom have a slave-like existence in the industry, underpaid and overworked in inhuman conditions.
Renowned writer MT Vasudevan Nair called Lekhayude Maranam his favourite among George's films, because it exposes more than what appears to be the world of cinema and its human side.
However, noted film editor Bina Paul, in an earlier conversation with TNM, said that though George's films were based around strong women characters, some were problematic too. If you look at Lekhayude Maranam there is a problem in his gaze of women, she said.
The industry that gave Shobha many things, including a National Award, cannot still evade responsibility for her suicide, although her death was apparently due to personal reasons. Terms familiar to the younger generation, like power play in relationships, manipulation, and consent, would have been alien to a teenager of the 1980s. A 1986 article on the Illustrated Weekly by KP Sunil, titled ‘Why do our actresses commit suicide’, said, “Shobha's life and death typifies the tragedy that befalls most starlets in the south.”
As much as one might appreciate George’s film for its insight, the fact that little appears to have changed in the way things work in cinema four decades down the line is, as George would say, too painful a reality to digest.