Being from a generation that was in school when the quantum of his movies was being made, I could have watched just over half of the movies that K.G. George made in his illustrious career in Malayalam cinema for over two decades. We were too young to understand parallel cinema and its intricate narratives. It failed to dawn upon our generation that these were revolutionary movies that dissected our societies and human lives like in a zoology lab, if not in a psychiatric lab as done in Swapnadanam.

Parallel cinema emerged in the late-1970s and 1980s through the cinematic lens of maestros like John Abraham, Aravindan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, K.P. Kumaran, and Shaji N. Karun, to name a few. An observer of Malayalam or Indian cinema will intuitively place the likes of K.G. George, Padmarajan and Bharathan in this hall of fame. 

But then, Padmarajan and Bharathan traversed along the fine line between mainstream and parallel cinemas and also sought to harness the commercial benefits of the mainstream through their treatment and presentation. Their movies were resplendent with songs, melodrama and colourful picturizations that added commercial flavour to their screen stories.

In hindsight, it is evident that K.G. George stood apart from both these classes of cinematic geniuses. He seemingly created a genre of meaningful cinema, which, in simpler terms, could be described as ‘parallel cinema that could find audience in theatres.’ In other words, he crafted serious cinematic narratives into a language that could be deciphered by the average movie buffs or the layman. 

Take any of George’s most feted movies - be it Yavanika, Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback, Mela, Panchavadi Palam, Yatryude Anthyam, Irrakal, Ee Kanni Koodi, or even Adaminte Variyel – this evocative language is most evident and a reason why his movies, like those of Padmarajan, found greater acceptance in both schools, parallel and mainstream. 

Capturing the human-society conflicts

K.G. George made a splash with Swapnadanam in 1976 with what was deemed to be Malayalam cinema’s first psycho-drama, or, rather, a psycho-analytical journey. The movie unveils itself through a psychiatric investigation and reveals the turmoil and travails of a man, in this case, a practising doctor, who is forced to live in imposed circumstances against his will. While the mental breakdown and his destitute wandering may not impress the present-day audience, the plot and its treatment were then a completely new terrain for not just Malayalam but Indian cinema as well.

George made a handful of movies through the 1970s which included critically acclaimed Mannu, Ullkadal, Mela and Kolangal, before breaking into the big league with Yavanika. 

His 1980 work, Mela, touched a raw nerve that mainstream cinema could have failed to engage without making a comical figure out of its leading protagonist - a dwarf circus performer who loses his beautiful wife to a handsome colleague. 

In 1982, George made his presence felt with Yavanika. The movie had all the ingredients of a commercial blockbuster and an enviable cast but kept the audience hooked on what turned out to be a thrilling whodunit with intense emotional undertones. A crime investigation surrounding a drama troupe certainly occupied mainstream space. But then, what got the movie a cult following was its treatment, the rawness of its characters and the profound spilling of emotions that could make the audience feel justified about a murder, though circumstantial, and empathize with the murderer. 

In 1983, a year after Yavanika, George shook the film industry with his Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback, with the tremors felt not just in the Malayalam industry but across South India. An unabashed cinematic adaptation of late actress Sobha’s life, her failed love life with acclaimed director Balu Mahendra and her eventual death, George, through the movie, unapologetically held the mirror to the film industry and exposed its immoral underbelly. That George dared to expose on screen the behind-the-curtain life of even a powerful director underlined the message that filmmakers should be guided by conviction rather than any unwritten rules of the industry. 
 

Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback has no parallels in Indian cinema.

Similarly, Adaminte Variyel (1984) was an immaculate cinematic assault on patriarchy and a perceptive tribute to feminism. The struggles of three women seeking to survive in patriarchal households, the differential modes of their resistance and a uniform detrimental outcome to their struggles represented how even a progressive society like Kerala struggled to provide gender parity and demolish the conventions shaped by male domination. 

The 1985 film Irrakal was the clinical depiction of the inner dynamics of a feudal Christian family wherein the manifold manifestations of wealth and immorality shaped the narrative. The inner politics within the family, the eroding influence of the patriarch, the wayward lives of the siblings, and the rebellion by the youngest scion and his murderous streaks were all woven into an intense family drama that raised questions of morality and virtues confronted by feudal joint families. 

George’s two subsequent works – Kathakku Pinnil (1987) and Mattoral (1988) – were similar experiments that tried to dig deep into human turmoil and latent societal hypocrisies that had essential presence in any society that claimed to be on a progressive journey. Kathakku Pinnil could have come across as just another thriller and portrayal of the plight of a hapless woman. However, the movie sought an inquiry into the concept of fatalism and illustrates that the lives of people are most often disastrous and hopeless when shaped by circumstances and fate. 

The plot of Mattoral may have been engaged by mainstream filmmakers in different ways. The story about a dominant and unemotive husband and a dissatisfied wife yearning for love and living in a meaningless marriage is a theme that has been captured in many dimensions. However, in Mattoral, George attempts an individualistic narrative wherein the viewer could be prodded to step into the shoes of each character. 

In fact, after the wife elopes with the mechanic, the audience begins to empathize with the distraught husband and realizes that his failure was in expressing his love for his family, not the absence of it. George, for that matter, does not bother to substantiate the wife’s decision to elope but justifies this gap subsequently by depicting her trauma when confronting her own valorous decision.

The uniqueness of many of these plots is their time and spatial settings. George, being contemporary in his narrative and craft, was most effective in capturing the social milieu and context of the Kerala society of the 1980s, which was then in the throes of social transformation and progress even while struggling with traditional norms and constructs. 

In fact, Kerala continues to be in that struggle though forces of modernization and social change could have substantially transformed its socio-cultural contours. As a result, many of us watching these George movies in retrospect might certainly benefit in gaining a glimpse of the Kerala society of the 1980s though possibly ending up in denial on the state of the society during that period. 

George’s Yathryude Anthyam was a 1989 telefilm produced by Doordarshan, which, interestingly, used to fund such meaningful cinematic ventures in those times. The film was a profound emotional journey, a travelogue that took you through a kaleidoscope of human lives that assemble in a long-distance bus journey. 

The protagonist on his way to meet an intimate elderly friend, starts the journey narrating his relationship with his friend but ends up witnessing, documenting and encountering a plethora of human stories, emotions and travails, all unleashing before him in various forms throughout the journey. After taking the audience through a heart-rendering roller-coaster ride, the film ends on a poignant note when the protagonist sees only the dead body of his friend awaiting him. 

The film, even if made for television, was crafted with a masterly script that could engage even the average mainstream audience and make them realise the significance and language of parallel cinema. 

The 1990 movie, Ee Kanni Kudi, was George’s penultimate movie before he went into a long hibernation, only to return with a swansong, Elavankodu Desham, which hardly did justice to his rich legacy. 

It is not easy to decipher what George sought to portray through Ee Kanni Kudi though the low-profile thriller, made with an ensemble of movie and theatre artistes, was a gripping emotional sojourn. George borrows from Adaminte Variyel and Kathaku Pinnil the persona of a struggling and distraught woman who must compromise for survival but, yet again, culminating in a dastardly end. Through an engaging storyline of a murder mystery, reminiscent of Yavanika, George seeks to again remind the audience about the vulnerability of women no matter the social and qualitative progress claimed in society. 

In a later day documentary, George's wife, Salma, a known playback singer, is seen complaining that the empathy George showed to his women characters has not been emulated in their personal lives. While George justifies this as elementary to his personality, the episode reveals how some of the film-making maestros had complex approaches to life and its intricate pathways which might have influenced their stories, scripts and narratives. 

 
Panchavadi Palam – the classic political satire

Why I kept George’s 1984 movie, Panchavadi Palam, to the last is to emphasize its significance in the chronicles of Indian cinema. Going into its annals, it is difficult to find a political satire that matches the crude parody and relatable comical caricatures that George uses to portray the decay in Indian politics, with specific reference to Kerala politics. The scenario, even if of a panchayat, could easily be transported to any panchayat in the country or to state politics in any part of the country.

 
One could tend to compare it with Kundan Shah’s 1983 movie, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, which too attempted a remarkable satire of political corruption and the politician-builder nexus. Though national in range as a Bollywood movie, the scope of Shah's storyline was limited in terms of its political sub-plots. 

 
Unlike the two photographers as central characters in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Panchavadi Palam, was innately political in theme and substance as its main protagonists were local political leaders, and their immediate families, though it also included politician-contractor nexus, like in Shah’s movie. 

 
It is difficult to identify if any other regional language cinemas have attempted political satire of this kind. Though the corrupt politician and his cohorts have been mainstreamed in Indian cinema in the 1990s, political satire of the Panchavadi Palam kind is a different genre altogether. 

 
George, thus, produces a masterpiece that remains unparalleled in Indian cinema. Though the Sreenivasan-Anthikad duo tried an encore through Sandesham in 1991, it had only moments of political comedy though largely turning out into a family drama driven by the ideological rivalry of the siblings. 

Panchavadi Palam, on the other hand, exposed the banality of politics, its ingrained opportunism as an Indian political hallmark, horse-trading in its most comical form and, above all, how politicians join hands when common interests of power sharing and corruption are at stake. It was thus a broad canvas of political exposition that has not been engaged in Indian cinema in this form and tone. 

From a personal point of view, I will consider Panchavadi Palam, Yatrayude Anthyam, Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback, Adaminte Variyel and Yavanika, etc., as among K.G. George’s most significant contributions to Indian cinema. 

As an endnote, it is important to also mention how George exploited the acting talents of many mainstream actors, particularly Mammooty, who was a fixture in many of his movies, as well as the likes of Bharat Gopi, Murali, M.G. Soman, Srividya, Nedumudi Venu and so on. The versatility of these actors has been so effectively used by George, the craftsman, as was exhibited by Bharat Gopi in Yavanika and Panchavadi Palam, Sri Vidya in Panchavadi Palam and Irrakal, Ganesh Kumar in Irrakal, and even Venu Nagavally, who surprised audiences with his sedate comedy in Panchavadi Palam. 

George also experimented with many theatre artists and new faces being given pivotal roles in some of his movies like Swapnadanam, Ee Kanni Koodi and Kathaku Pinnil. 

Indian cinema only stands to regret that K.G. George took premature retirement after Elavankodu Desham in 1998. Many more films that could have turned into classics and created a permanent price of place in the annals of Indian cinema did not materialize due to George’s early withdrawal from the field.