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History can be oddly terrifying and calming in equal measure. To understand where Lokah, the celebrated female superhero film, came from, one must turn the pages back to the beginning of Malayalam cinema. If you want to comprehend the enormity of Lokah’s success, you have to know how women had trodden this fantastical world of cinema to reach here.
In a little over a month since its release, Lokah, starring Kalyani Priyadarshan as a yakshi fighting evil, has raked in milestone after milestone, including becoming the highest grossing Malayalam film.
To an outsider, this may not come as much of a surprise — Malayalam cinema, that respected repository of great films and pioneers, producing the first female superhero movie in India. But to the people of Kerala, it is an unbelievable journey that has taken nearly a century.
This is the land that chased away its first heroine. PK Rosy’s story is by now well known, thanks to the many writings and even a biopic about the first Malayalam film, Vigathakumaran. JC Daniel had picked her to be his heroine, and together they played the lead in the silent black-and-white film, screened at the Capitol Theatre in 1930.
The rest of Rosy’s story wipes away every ounce of nostalgia you might have felt for the early days of Malayalam cinema. Caste men in the audience at the Capitol Theatre were angered by Rosy’s portrayal of a privileged Nair woman. Their hostility had more to do with her Dalit origins than her gender. Rosy faded into oblivion for decades and never came before the public eye again, let alone acted in a film.
Twenty years after Vigathakumaran, Malayalam cinema plunged into the business with a vengeance, scripting films that, it would seem, called out casteism. P Bhaskaran’s Neelakuyil of 1954 led the way and cast Miss Kumari as the lowered caste woman betrayed by the Nair hero. As if to make up for the horrible way they had treated Rosy, Malayalis celebrated Kumari and made her a star.
But Kumari did not last as long as her male peers, and her early death at the age of 37 caused much speculation. Barely four years later, another young star, Vijayashree, died by suicide, after the release of a film containing a compromising bath scene, part of it which was allegedly shot without her permission. As these tragedies unfolded, heated discussions about the “unsafety” of women in cinema also arose, echoing concerns that dated back to the earliest public performances.
After all, the opposition to performing women was universal — for centuries men had to play women on stage, including in Shakespearean dramas, and the rare female actors were belittled.
In the 1969 Malayalam film Koottukudumbam, Prem Nazir’s character leaves his fiancée (Sarada) when he learns she had acted in plays to earn money for his higher education. But in real life, women shed their inhibitions, walked into the world of arts and cinema, and inevitably found a place in people’s hearts.
By the 1970s, women actors such as Sarada, Sheela, and Jaya Bharathi were ruling the roost, enjoying prominence in films alongside their male counterparts. Sheela’s Kalli Chellamma or Collector Malathy, and Sarada’s Swayamvaram or Udyogastha, were all lapped up at the same time as Prem Nazir’s, Sathyan’s, and Madhu’s films. Chemmeen, the cult film on coastal lives, was as much Sheela’s as it was Sathyan’s or Madhu’s. Although patriarchy seemed to be the underlying force guiding many films, women’s roles in family and society were given due respect. Outspoken women were more the norm than the exception.
However, there was always the occasional film modelled on the taming of the shrew, often pitting one patriarchy-abiding smart woman against another who placed herself above the man in the house. The trope was carried over from one decade to another — if it was Acharam Ammini Osharam Omana in the 70s, it was Balachandra Menon’s family dramas in the 80s (eg Karyam Nissaram), Jayaram’s comedies in the 90s (eg Njangal Santhushtarananu), and Dileep’s disasters in the 2000s (eg Mr Marumakan).
Even in the 1980s, a decade known for films with adventurous, playful, and intellectual women, there was often the silent stroking of the male ego, the ‘unsaid acceptance’ of male superiority. In MT Vasudevan Nair’s Aksharangal, the strength of two independent women appears to be measured by how much they care for the man they both love. In another MT film, Aalkkoottathil Thaniye, Ammukutty gives everything she has to educate a man she loves and lets him go so he can aim higher. But admirably, MT’s women also speak the truth — in Aalkkoottathil Thaniye, Ammukutty questions the man who is angry with his wife for accepting a better job in another country: “won’t you have gone in her place?”
Those were the years of MT’s Panjagni — about a woman on parole taking the gun again to save another — and Padmarajan’s Deshadanakili Karayarilla, the story of two girls running away in search of a freer life. KG George’s Aadaminte Variyellu ended famously with women running out of the gates that bound them, past a bewildered George and his camera. Bharathan’s Indu teacher found forbidden love in Chamaram, and Padmarajan’s Clara chose sex work over a half-hearted marriage proposal in Thoovanathumbikal.
Well-read and humorous young women emerged (Aaranyakam), alongside loners in search of their mothers and grandmothers (Fazil’s Ente Sooryaputhrikku and Nokkethadhoorathu Kannum Nattu). In Kamal’s Kakkothikkavile Appooppan Thaadikal, two sisters loved each other through years of complete absences and uncertainties.
But this accommodating structure of Malayalam cinema, built with such care and thought, came tumbling down in the mid-90s and early 2000s, when a series of films were written for male superstars to play larger-than-life figures. They spouted preachy monologues, including on the place of women, and defeated villains (more with their tiring speeches than with action, it would seem!). Mohanlal and Mammootty became victims of repetitive themes and loud dramas, far removed from the grounded stories they had helped bring alive in earlier decades. Women, including the versatile Urvashi and the expressive Shobana, were pushed to the sidelines in their prime.
This was also the era when soft porn cinema gained a foothold in Malayalam films, and Shakeela, one of the decade’s most famous stars, became a household name. Exposing a stark hypocrisy, men who had otherwise moral-policed women for every unconventional choice flocked to late-night screenings of Shakeela’s films, filling cinemas across the state.
It took the 2010s for a new crop of writers and filmmakers to throw tasteless clichés down the drain and bring back stories carved from life, rolling out the carpet for women to reclaim their rightful place. Women of all hues — evil and angelic, funny and weird, romantic and indifferent — found a place in the scripts of younger minds.
More women took seats behind the camera, to write, direct, and cinematograph films. They wrote about men (Geethu Mohandas with her Moothon), about relationships (Anjali Menon with Bangalore Days and Koode), about casteism (Ratheena with Puzhu), and about women (Shruthi Sharanyam with B 32 Muthal 44 Vare and Sivaranjini with Victoria). Lesser-seen sides of women’s bonds were not just written about but well received, such as Christo Tommy’s Ullozhukku with a heartwarming bond between a mother-in-law (Urvashi) and daughter-in-law (Parvathy Thirvothu). Newer films were unafraid to say that abuse was not tolerated. Women walked out of the drudgery of housework (The Great Indian Kitchen) or learnt to fight back (Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey).
The stage was set for a film like Lokah to be written, and Dominic Arun and Santhy Balachandran presented it without compromises — in a way that few could ridicule the story of a fast, flying, fighting woman who lived through centuries. A society that still found pleasure in nitpicking the faults of an outspoken woman in the public sphere applauded Neeli, aka Chandra, in Lokah because the ground had been prepped by decades of cinema.
Watch an interview with Santhy Balachandran here: