Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha

Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha (transl. A Northern Ballad of Valor) is Malayalam literary giant M.T. Vasudevan Nair's retelling of a sub plot from Vadakkan Pattukal (transl. Northern Ballads), directed by Hariharan. Mammootty essays the role of Chandu Chekavar, a negative character in the ballads, who was given new life and a positive spin by the magic of M.T's pen. In 1989, this film (along with Mathilukal) brought Mammotty his first Bharath award - India's national award for the best male actor in a leading role. It also won the best screenplay award at the national level.

Mammootty as Chandu and Madhavi as Unniarcha in Oru Vadakkan Veeragadha (1989)

Malayalam movies nor audience are big on historical dramas, unlike the rest of India or south India. It was an ambitious project for the eighties. Comparing the magnum opus-es of the present day like PS1 or Baahubali, the production design of this eighties movie is almost at the level of a school play. But the screenplay and dialog is beyond compare. The casting and the acting elevates the frames and takes your eyes away from the plastic bead necklaces and cardboard sets.

In addition to Mammootty, Madhavi and Suresh Gopi, Balan K. Nair, Captain Raju, Geetha, Rajalakshmi, V.K. Sreeraman, Sukumari and Sanjay Mitra play other important characters. The soundtrack had some memorable tracks that still maintains their irresistable charm, all these years later.

Madhavi as Unniarcha, Mammootty as Chandu Chekavar and Suresh Gopi as Aromal Chekavar

While Mammootty's Chandu is one of the most unforgettable characters in Malayalam cinema ever, the hero, the villain and the creator of this landmark movie is M.T. Vasudevan Nair. M.T, the author is quite a maestro when it comes to giving under-represented mythical and historical characters their due, by offering the readers/audience a different and nuanced perspective of the character through his work. Before resurrecting and reshaping Chandu Chekavar's traitorous destiny half a millennia after the original ballads (which were based on true life stories of the warriors of north Malabar in the medieval era) were composed, M.T had successfully broken the ground for such character facelifts in his brilliant novel, Randamoozham in 1984.

Randamoozham  (transl. The Second Turn) is his retelling of the world of Bhimasena, the second in line of the Pandava clan in Mahabharata who was always pushed to the sidelines by righteous first-born Yudhishtira and the brave and glamorous younger brother Arjuna. It is one of my favorite Malayalam novels ever.

After re-watching Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha as an adult, I realize Chandu's cinematic and literary makeover was at the cost of shifting the blame to other lead characters. Aaromal Chekavar and Unniarcha drew the short straw in M.T's version of the story. I don't remember any of this kind of passing-the-buck happening in Randamoozham?

Aromal, the original hero of the ballad becomes a one-dimensional guy much in contrast to the legendary multi-faceted hero that he was. Instead of urumis and swords he should have been using, under M.T's masterful character correction, he is left with just an axe (to grind, with Chandu.) 

Unniarcha, the fabled warrior princess of Poothuram, is stricken by an acute case of men-writing-women in Malayalam. As the story takes place in the medieval times the focus is less on women's body parts and more on their fickle emotions like deceit, pretense and cunning. These universal characteristics of womenkind are embodied by Unniarcha in the movie and Chandu's dialogs to Archa (written by M.T) are used to rub it in at turning points in the movie to paint her as the fall guy (gal.)

Despite these persona revisions, Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha is a watershed movie for Malayalam movie industry. A native ballad, re-written for screen by one of the masterful talents of Malayalam literature, performed by some of the best actors in their prime against the backdrop of a spectacular soundtrack, no other historical or mythological costume drama has ever come close to it in terms of overall impact. In 1989 it was the longest running Malayalam movie in theaters ever, running for more than one year at Sangham theater, Kozhikode and the biggest blockbuster of the year.

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Irakal (The Victims)

 Another K.G.George gem from the early eighties, Irakal is the debut film of Ganesh Kumar. I didn't have much of an impression of Ganesh Kumar as an actor till I saw this movie. He makes a pretty decent debut as Baby Matthews the youngest son of a wealthy Christian business family and a closet psychopath - as in he has not come out to the family yet about his psychotic tendencies.

L to R Gopi as the Bishop and Ganesh Kumar as Baby Matthews

I remember a K.G.George interview where he mentions he had modeled Baby's character on Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son and heir apparent (before he died in an untimely air crash) of India's former Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Irakal came out, eight years after Emergency - which was a period of almost two years starting from 1975 when the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi placed the entire country under a state of emergency. It was alleged that Sanjay Gandhi who had no political position ran a police state terrorizing the administration and the people using his mother's position and influence.

L to R  Ganesh Kumar and Ashokan in Irakal

All the characters in the movie are perfectly fleshed out and the script is taut. Actor Sukumaran who produced the movie also plays the role of the alcoholic middle son - Sunny Matthews. Thilakan plays the big daddy rubber baron and family stalwart, Matthews or Mathukkutty. Srividya is the oldest sister and the only girl in the family, and Radha plays Baby's love interest. Venu Nagavalli as usual loses the girl and meets a gory end. Ashokan also gets to play a small part as Baby's local acquaintance.

Irakal was awarded the best ever original Malayalam screenplay thirty years after its release. But the movie was not a commercial success when it hit the theaters in 1985.  It is said that Sukumaran had to make a couple of commercially successful films to recoup the losses he suffered in producing Irakal. It is a very mature film for a discerning audience, probably not the regular movie-goer's cup of tea. 

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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.

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