Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback

 Movies about movie industry are fascinating to a curious audience. If that intersects with true crime or unsolved mysteries genre, it is even more captivating. Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback ( eng: Lekha's Death - A Flashback) directed by K.G.George, takes place in the Malayalam movie industry of the late seventies. It is loosely based on the suicide of a famous Malayalam actress of the time - Shobha. There were also rumors at the time it was not a suicide, but an accidental murder framed as a suicide. 

Many S.Indian actresses at the time came from poor families. With a few years of dance or music training in their kitties, these girls along with the rest of their family boarded trains to Madras to try their luck in movies. Of the hundreds who came to Madras with movie star dreams only a handful made it to the top and their path to stardom often was no picnic. In LMOF, the director K.G.George tells the story of Shantamma, one such girl from some village in Kerala. 

The first step to becoming a S.Indian movie actress is to change their real name into a fashionable pseudonym. This trend was more common 40-60 years ago, than now. Thus Shantamma becomes Lekha. Lekha (Nalini) is egged on by her over-zealous mother, played by Subha, who is bent on making her daughter a star at any cost. 

The costs she had to incur en route to stardom are enormous - from having to sleep with various powerful men to having to support the entire extended family through out her working life. Again this is a story typical of many girls' journeys in the south Indian film industry at the time. The character Lekha is one of the lucky few, many others find that their pinnacle of growth reaches a plateau as a  background or cabaret dancer.

The greatest similarity between LMOF and the life of the real life actress Shobha, is the affair Lekha has with a film director, Suresh Babu (Gopi). Shobha had an affair with director Balu Mahendra while he was married to his first wife which ultimately culminated in her marriage with Mahendra. Even during his short-lived marriage with Shobha, Balu Mahendra often spent nights at his first wife's place saying the he had to take care of his nine year old son. These are depicted as such in the movie, except that Lekha and Suresh Babu are not married, it is an ongoing affair in the film. Suresh Babu's attire is an exact copy of Mahendra's unifrom at the time

Nalini as Lekha and Gopi as Suresh Babu

Shobha didn't go through the struggle Lekha did trying to achieve stardom. Shobha's mother Prema Menon was already a supporting actor in Malayalam and Shobha had also been a child-artist in several films. The struggle part of Lekha's story is the stereotypical uphill battle faced by female artists in the industry at the time. 

A scene from Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback. Subha, Nalini, Nedumudi Venu (R to L)

The story, screenplay and direction of LMOF is by K.G.George. Shobha's suicide and the mystery surrounding it might have been irresistible to the director who was always beguiled by the unpredictability of human mind and the fragility of relationships.