Films about films are tricky. Often, they end up being self-indulgent and insider-y to the point of exclusion. But KG George, when he made his first meta film, dodged all the traps and came up with a self-aware, self-reflective, unemotional look at the world of films. It follows the production process from the grimy underbelly of Kodambakkam studios to the marbled lobbies of five-star hotels where films are signed and celebrated.
Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback opens with the black-and-white newsreel of a young actor’s death. Fans, film stars and technicians are trickling in, offering floral tributes accompanied by the strains of the shehnai as the dreary drone of a voice-over (which conspicuously sounds like the director’s) details how her body was found hanging from the ceiling of her apartment. The entire film is, as promised in the title, in flashback mode. It is the story of how Shantamma (Nalini), a young girl hailing from a village in Kerala, becomes Lekha the superstar. The film, at the time of its release, ran into controversy for allegedly sensationalising the real-life story of the remarkable young actor Shobha, who took her life at the prime of her career following an affair with the much-married cinematographer-director Balu Mahendra.
The film slowly starts to unravel when the young and naive Shantamma in her dhavani migrates to Chennai with her ambitious mother and father. After several fruitless attempts to get an opening in the film world, with quite a few expecting “sexual favors” in return for a role, eventually an assistant director (Nedumudi Venu) offers to help them. He shifts them to a dingy one-room house in Kodambakkam (considered the safe haven for strugglers in south Indian cinema). There, a seasoned journalist and photographer are assigned to make her “portfolio” where she awkwardly strikes a pose, and shyly protests when he hikes her skirt a little.
Shantamma is rechristened as Lekha. Early in her career, Lekha understands that everything in life comes with a price and she finds herself being systematically exploited by the system. The ‘casting couch’, a euphemism for sexual harassment in the film world, follows her everywhere and she silently complies—beginning from the assistant director to the powerful men in cinema.
Her ruthlessly ambitious mother callously looks the other way when she comes back after having to sell herself for money every night. There are other women with similar fate, such as the female actor she meets on the sets, who is the perennial cabaret dancer in films. She shows off her wardrobes stuffed with saris to Lekha— “But no one wants to see me in saris in films.”
Her meteoric rise from a junior artist to the superstar of Malayalam cinema is showcased through magazine covers, posing with superstars and her various roles. With fame comes money, a bungalow, cars, yet the mother remains greedy and manipulative. But ironically, the sexual exploitation never stops, as she continues to be solicited by rich and powerful men. Even after her fame, she is reminded to be grateful towards her superstar benefactor (Mammootty who plays a superstar and mimics Sukumaran for some strange reason), when clearly, she had to pay a price for it. Lekha, despite her fame and money, remains a kind spirit at heart, tired of her manipulative mother and only desires to be loved. “Who has shown us kindness here? Who should we be obligated to,” Lekha observes in a rare moment of perceptiveness to her mother.
The narrative provides insights on the conventions found in Malayalam cinema at that time—the power equations of male superstars, the pitiable plight of junior artists, sexual harassment and offers a peek into the monotony of film shooting. And typically, George shows it as it is, without falling back on parody or humour, and therefore the effect is twice unsettling.
If Lekha remained a string-puppet of her mother, it is only after she meets Suresh Babu, an avant-garde filmmaker that she starts to think for herself. Babu (Bharat Gopy) is that intellectual in cinema who admits to not having watched Malayalam films as they are not worth watching. “I like to think that I make a different kind of Malayalam cinema,” he declares to an already infatuated Lekha.
He is coldly logical and indifferent about the system which exploits female actors and has no qualms in casually telling an embarrassed Lekha— “I know all about the girls who shift to Madras to try their luck in films.” Lekha is too naïve to see through his cockiness or how slyly he is drawing her towards him by spinning a sympathetic plotline about being neglected by his wife and being trapped in a “marriage of compromise.” That seems to be an easy bait for the 18-year-old who is already sick of her abusive family and is desperate to be loved. Suresh is also clever to set the seduction game in his favour by gloating about her acting talent. Something she was not used to before. This love affair gives Lekha the courage to put her foot down.
For her mother, she is the goose that laid the golden eggs. As she slips into a myriad roles, her mother is seen counting money hungrily. When a co-actor proposes marriage, her mother laughs sardonically— “If she doesn’t get married, she will be considered public property.” Plainly hinting at the stigma attached to married female actors as opposed to married male actors and unsurprisingly, not much has changed since.
When they lie in bed, she recounts her recurring nightmare in which she is lifted high by giant hands and then dropped onto jagged rocks. “No one has ever loved me,” she sobs plaintively in Suresh’s arms, “Won’t you save me from this hell?” His response to this is a dry “I will try. Let us see.” Romance was always way out of George’s cinematic grammar and his characters always spoke plainly, never skirted around the truth. But soon, she realises it was all an illusion as he coolly walks out with his wife—“I never gave you hope. You were foolish to have expectations.”
This film made in 1983, resonates to this day. Two decades later, a similar plight was registered lightly in Udayananu Tharam, a meta film, which has a heroine who elopes with the assistant director after being at the receiving end of her family’s exploitation and greed. Lekha, in a way, reminds us why most female actors often throw away their brilliant careers for a life of domesticity. It is a telling commentary on the cruel, demanding world of cinema, about female actors who are steadily abused in a world ruled by men, about being lonely despite reaching the pinnacle of success and how apathetic they are about personal weaknesses.
Watch: Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback on YouTube
Neelima Menon has worked in the newspaper industry for more than a decade. She has covered Hindi and Malayalam cinema for The New Indian Express and has worked briefly with Silverscreen.in. She now writes exclusively about Malayalam cinema, contributing to Fullpicture.in and thenewsminute.com. She is known for her detailed and insightful features on misogyny and the lack of representation of women in Malayalam cinema.