A #MeToo Film From Mollywood Well Before #MeToo Was Coined

For all its many faults, the film industry has occasionally managed to hold a mirror to itself.

And in those rare moments, the reflection has not been all that flattering. Especially of the women who are part of the industry as actresses. 

The unfolding avalanche of allegations against some well-known names of the Malayalam film industry after the Hema Committee report was made public may be a good time to revisit one of the controversial Malayalam films of the early 1980s, Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback (1983).

The film, as some of you old-timers may recall, was loosely based on the tough and troubled life of South Indian actress Shobha, who won a National Award and also unfortunately took her own life when she was not even 18.

Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback, directed by that avant garde director K G George, kicked up such a storm that Shobha's mother, Prema Menon, tried to prevent the film's release on the ground that it showed her and her daughter in poor light.

Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback was perhaps the second Indian movie ever to take a realistic look at the lives of actresses behind the glitz and glamour that otherwise accompany their outside world. The first film was perhaps Bhumika, in which the veteran Shyam Benegal was inspired by the maverick life of Marathi stage and screen actor Hansa Wadkar through her memoir Sangtye Aika. 

Bhumika (1977), featuring Smita Patil, Amol Palekar, Anant Nag, Naseeruddin Shah, and Amrish Puri, showed, albeit in a veiled and euphemistic manner, that actresses have to contend with pimping husbands, lusting co-stars, and in general men folk who don't seem to think that women have an existence beyond their bodily reality. 

But Bhumika being an art house film with not much mainstream attention didn't trigger many ripples in its immediate aftermath. Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback, which released five years later, however, courted controversy even before its release, as the Malayalam film's story was serialised in the Tamil magazine Kumudam even when it was still in the filming stage.

From what emerged in the magazine, Shobha's mother, Prema, who had already kicked up a storm after her daughter's unfortunate death in May 1980, was convinced that Tamil director and cinematographer Balu Mahendra, with whom Shobha had a contentious and tumultuous relationship, was helping behind the scenes of George's movie. That Mahendra also happened to be in Ooty, where the filming took place, added fuel to her fire. 

Shobha-Balu Mahendra, A Problematic Affair

Prema, however, had every reason to be unhappy with Mahendra. Though Shobha took her own life, the teenage girl's tempestuous relationship with a married man with a son was a major trigger for her fatal decision.

The Shobha-Mahendra affair was the stuff of gossip magazines then. Mahendra was widely described as the Svengali to the wide-eyed Shobha, who, even though she had made her debut as a child actress, hit a purple patch after she met Mahendra.

Mahendra, at that time, was the emerging hotshot cinematographer with remarkable artistry. His work was the talk of the industry in the mid-70s, and the Kerala-born Shobha saw the world in him. Then reports had that the callow Shobha used to call him an uncle, and he was kind of a father figure to her. How such a respectable relationship went into something totally different and dangerous is one of the tragedies that the culture of filmdom engenders. 

Mahendra, when he became a director for the first time in 1977 through the Kannada film Kokila, had no hesitation in casting Shobha in the title character opposite Kamal Haasan. That was the beginning of a dream run of roles for Shobha that, of course, culminated in a National Award for the actress for the Tamil film Pasi (1980).

Among her memorable films, which also had Mahendra either as director or cinematographer, were Tharam Marindi (1977, Telugu), Mullum Malarum (1977, Tamil), Azhiyatha Kolangal (1979, Tamil), and Moodu Pani (1980, Tamil).

According to The Illustrated Weekly, Shobha and Mahendra married on 1 July 1979 at a village shrine while shooting for Azhiyatha Kolangal. Upon their return to Madras, she lived in K K Nagar, where Mahendra was a regular visitor.

Things, according to reports then, went into a tailspin when she insisted that Mahendra make his relationship with her official and public. There were plenty of showdowns between them, and a day before she took her life, Mahendra's first wife and nine-year-old son visited her residence.

Woke Brigade Has Sanitised Balu Mahendra's Past

On 1 May, Shobha was found dead in her house, and all hell broke loose. It was feverishly rumoured then that it was a murder, with the director-cinematographer having a hand in it. Prema wrote to then-prime minister Indira Gandhi to help initiate a probe into the 'suspicious death'. 

The then-chief minister of the state, M G Ramachandran, seemed to be convinced that Mahendra was responsible for Shobha's death, and he wanted the Crime Branch, Criminal Investigation Department (CB-CID), which was entrusted with the investigation, to somehow implicate the director. (There is a revealing chapter in the book A Road Well Travelled by former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director V K Raghavan, who headed the CB-CID in the state then, about how MGR wanted to make the suicide look like a murder.)

Anyway, Mahendra was under scrutiny for a long time, and a few unrelated revelations came to the fore, including the one that he, who was born in Sri Lanka, had come and settled in India without valid papers. But the case did not progress much; there was no clinching evidence either to prove Mahendra's culpability or that it was murder. 

Still, the man had a lot to answer for leading a young, underage girl up the garden path and how he had an indecent liaison with a woman who couldn't have been expected to know any better since she was of an impressionable age. Mahendra went scot-free, even though his relationship with Shobha was legally (not to speak of morally) wrong. 

The stormy link was directly responsible for the actress' death. But the man not only escaped; he also ended up a 'legend' of the industry. His past has been sanitised because his students like Vetrimaran, Ram, Amir, and Bala (all important directors of Tamil cinema in recent times) rule the roost and set their version of the woke agenda in the industry. That is how the liberal ecosystem works. No surprises, really.

Objectification Of Women An Inescapable Reality Of Cinema

Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback did not evoke much debate for the portions involving the nominal character of Balu Mahendra (played by Bharath Gopi as Suresh Babu). But the segments portraying the early years of Shobha as she struggled to make it as an actress after being a child artist became controversial.

The film did not hold back and showed that Lekha (Nalini) and her mother, Visalakshi (Shubha), had to practically resort to prostitution to get producers and directors to cast the actress in films. There was also an associate director who professes love to her only to pimp her to a producer so that he can become a director. The men of the industry have little or no scruples, the film suggests. 

The film charts the rise of shy and happy-go-lucky Shantamma to the screen diva Lekha and how she is treated shabbily by a male-dominated film system and how her relatives and her own (drunkard) father are just vultures feeding off the riches that come through her. Even her mother is no saint. She is a saviour as well as an exploiter.

Mammootty plays superstar Krishna Das, who works with Lekha in many films but is indifferent and distant to her pathetic plight. Just like the top stars of today who choose to look elsewhere even as actresses are put through the wringer.

A Cautionary Tale Turned Tragedy

The film, without being preachy or documentary, showed how women are exploited both on and off the screen in Kollywood, and the system was rotten forever. In one of the scenes, Lekha's trusted friend, who ends up as an 'item girl' (if that's the word) in films, tells her, "They won’t permit me to don any of these sarees in any movie. They believe cabaret dancers don’t require clothes. I have confidence in my acting prowess, but all they seem to want is my body, not my talent." Objectification of women, on screen and outside of it, is a reality. Then and now.

The Bharath Gopi character who develops an affair with Lekha proves to be typically male and self-centred. The night after the showdown between his wife and Lekha, he tells the latter that he can't ditch his wife but will continue with his affair as long as it remains an adjustment. Lekha is crestfallen and takes her life that night, as was reportedly the case in its real-life inspiration too. This was less than six months after she had won the National Award as a 16-year-old precocious acting talent.

Lekha, no Shobha actually, was supposed to be a cautionary tale for the industry. But the never-ending #metoo incidents show that the filmwoods have not bothered to get better. If anything, things seem to have worsened. Mahendra is lionised as an industry great. Shobha is reduced to an unlucky footnote. Need we say any more?

Shobhayude Maranam Oru Flashback is a true tragedy!