Grace of an Indian Woman. Review on Shobhana

Woman has thousand faces. Unfortunately we mostly recognize only one, the glamorous one.

Indian movie has always celebrated womanhood, no doubt on it. For most of the time, in a monotonic color and dress. In side the theatre, audience was 100 per cent male in attitude, irrespective of the fact that it wore sari or pants in its body. It preferred a robot?s mind for its heroin. Heroin had always to sing and dance whenever the audience wished. Her chunari dropped whenever it got bored with nauseating and self-proclaiming dialogues of the macho lead. Seldom came a heroin with a soul? A flash of a minute, and it went.

So, what to be written about a heroin of movies? The question is common when the review is on a personality, who is not-so- popular for the elite bollywood watchers. No, I am not complaining about the malevolent dominance of the king industry in sidelining the rather sensible regional movies. I wrote this because the heroin is an artist. The review is not on another glamorous-yet-moronic doll who visit every weekend to your nearby theatre.

Shobana never ruled any industry, though had a powerful stand in all the South Indian language movies at a time. And she is there for last 20 years in Malayalam movies, with few significant intervals. This gains importance when we read along that she didn?t feel it necessary to dress less as ?the role demands?. She was the most favorite actress for the mass at least for a few years - the same audience, which later celebrated Shakeela, the she-elephant of soft porn flicks. I think the sustained popularity was the greatest achievement of Shobhana, even over the two national awards she bagged.

While analyzing the career of this lady, her greatest asset can be pointed out as her face. She could translate the feelings of a village girl of Yathra or Thenmavin Kompathu and the ulta-modern IndiPop singer of Manathe Vellitheru, with same ease though it. We feel that no face could show so much innocence as hers did in Innale and Dhwani. With powerful eyes and lean stature she could give a different tint for each character.

She could dance well. Yes, that is an understatement. She put a standard to judge other girls? dancing style and ability. But never fully exploited was her dancing caliber. She had to dance whenever the hero dreamt. Yes, there are movies where she had to dance as the character had to dance. But still, never she did a Mayoori or a Sagarasangamam. The loss is ours.

Her most brilliant acting experience happened in 1993, when she did Manichitrathazhu. The film was hers, even when two Malayalam superstars were there through out. The para-psychiatric theme of Dual Personality (one of a housewife and other of a murderous tamil dancer) could not be imagined with another artist. (With due respect, I should say that Saudarya?s portrait of the same character in recent AptaMitra (?) (Kannada) was nowhere compared to the original. And I am afraid to see the new Tamil version of Rajni Kanth?s ChandraMukhi).

Heard that she did lot of Telgu movies where she had played action heroin.. like she did in Ayudham. What do you think, Telgu friend.. Chappu..

She bagged her second national award for Mitr-My friend. I am yet to see this movie. If you did, please comment on it.

Why I recommend her as an artist? She was the ultimate professional workingwoman of modern India. She did her works so beautifully with the touch she only could impart. And she was confident on her virtue, which reflected in her style and smile. Was in news only for her achievements and career and not for the private life. She had a wonderful career of classical dancer, which went complementarily to her film career. She selected characters well. Or went on with her dancing career when she felt that the characters came to her are not of her standard. I believe in this multifaceted personality as an artist, because she was right in her career. That is no small issue in this big world.

[Due to the personal inexperience of the reviewer with the other South Indian movies, the review is limited to Malayalam films.. There is a con!].