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Beyond The Alpha: How Malayalam Cinema Reimagined Masculinity In 2025

This year, masculinity is being reshaped not through triumph but through restraint, caregiving, and survival. Be it a broker, a cop, or a boy-next-door, they carry softness into hostile systems.

Neelima+Menon
Dec 29, 2025

These men do not conquer; they remain — thus offering a deeply political reimagining of the male lead.

ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING subversions in Lokah: Chapter 1 – Chandra lies in the dynamic between Chandra (Kalyani Priyadarshan) and Sunny (Naslen Gafoor). Very early in the film, we are introduced to Sunny, the quintessential boy-next-door, who finds himself quietly smitten by his newly moved-in neighbour. What’s notable is how deliberately the film avoids the usual beats of cinematic wooing. Sunny is soft, hesitant, and acutely conscious of Chandra’s boundaries. Take the moment inside the auto, where he casually, almost awkwardly, extends a party invitation, fully prepared for her to say no. Or the sequence at the house party, where even when Chandra arrives in all her splendour, he never oversteps or attempts to claim space he hasn’t been offered. His restraint is not performative but rather feels instinctive.
Their romance is carefully calibrated. Sunny doesn’t mask his panic when he begins to grasp Chandra’s true identity, nor does the film turn that fear into betrayal. Even at his most terrified, he tries, in his own quiet way, to signal that he can be trusted—that he will show up when it matters. The Sunny–Chandra dynamic emerges as one of the film’s strongest narrative threads. And in a beautifully twisted inversion, it is precisely the gender imbalance, the softness of the man blending with the overwhelming power of the woman, that lends Chandra her superhero sheen. ALSO FROM THE AUTHOR | How Lokah Reimagines The Yakshi In Malayalam Cinema
Incidentally, Naslen’s Jojo Johnson in Alappuzha Gymkhana carries clear shades of Sunny. He’s that relatable teen, but the one who isn’t paralysed by academic failure and would rather look for practical ways to work around it. Though Jojo is realistic enough to understand that the world rewards only winners, he keeps going, leaning on friendship and collective spirit instead of chasing solitary, heroic triumphs. Once again, the most striking subversion lies in how Jojo navigates romance. There’s that quietly groundbreaking moment where he is briefly overwhelmed when his partner confidently suggests different kissing techniques. But instead of posturing or forcing bravado, he makes a hasty retreat, choosing self-preservation over a bruised ego. And soon after, when he confides in his childhood friend, she not just normalises his vulnerability and anxiety but also offers reassurance without ever inflating his masculinity.Then there is this instance when he doesn’t allow rejection to sour into resentment. In what can be called a rare response from a male protagonist in Malayalam cinema, he takes it lightly and never flinches from openly admiring her skill and competence. In these small but deliberate choices, Jojo, like Sunny, redefines what cinematic masculinity can look like: self-aware, secure enough to step back, and unafraid of being seen as anything less than dominant. ALSO READ | Alappuzha Gymkhana Boxes With Tropes — And Wins
Meanwhile, Jewellery broker PP Ajesh in PonMan is introduced at a moment of absolute precarity. He has been cheated out of his gold by a new bride and her family and has to now race against an unforgiving deadline. But when he realises that he is up against a woman who is as much a pawn in the system as he is, caught within patriarchy, familial coercion and economic desperation and is forced to put up with her ruthless, predatory husband, Ajesh recalibrates. He is patient, but unrelenting, drawing on every ounce of resilience accumulated over years of being worn down by circumstance. There is no grand heroism here, just persistence born out of necessity. And that’s precisely why Ajesh emerges as one of the most rooted and realistic protagonists of the year. Even his flashes of anger and audacity feel less like bravado and more like protective reflexes to mask a life spent in survival mode.The film’s most affecting moment arrives in Ajesh’s no-holds-barred rant at the bride’s brother, responding to his decision to choose suicide over resistance. It carries so much emotional weight as it gestures toward a difficult truth: conformity is often presented as maturity, while resistance is made to seem reckless or futile. Therefore, Ajesh’s anguish is directed less at the individual and more at a culture that leaves men feeling cornered, thereby encouraging them to absorb loss quietly, so long as the appearance of dignity remains intact.  In Ajesh, the film holds up a mirror to a vast section of young men trapped within debt, family hierarchies, caste-coded expectations, and economic stagnation, the ones who are acutely aware of their entrapment, but see no legitimate routes of escape. His struggle is therefore systemic, exhausting, and deeply familiar. And it is precisely this refusal to romanticise suffering that gives the character his political weight.
In a way, Ronth’s SI Yohannan, played by Dileesh Pothan, feels like a companion figure to Ajesh — another man trapped within a system that offers no room for weakness. Once again, the film quietly subverts the familiar image of the fiery, righteous celluloid cop who fears no one, clashes loudly with authority, and takes on the world armed with moral certainty. Yohannan is none of that. What makes him especially affecting is the duality he carries into his personal life. His relationship with his wife, who lives with clinical depression, reveals a tenderness that rarely finds space in depictions of masculine authority. It is here that his toughness dissolves into something gentler — patient, attentive, almost fragile in its care. ALSO READ | More Than A Director: Six Performances That Showcase Dileesh Pothan's Quiet Power As An Actor
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At work, Yohannan is emotionally armoured. He has long since adjusted to the darkness and relentlessness of the system and does not attempt to offer rose-tinted assurances to his idealistic junior. His worldview is pragmatic to the point of discomfort. Even the act of accepting a bribe comes with a weary, almost absurd justification — it’s money to fix the police jeep. Not corruption as villainy, but as routine maintenance within a broken structure. And when the system inevitably turns on its own, it isn’t rage or rebellion that defines Yohannan’s response but his calm. That quiet acceptance, more than any dramatic outburst, is what makes him unsettling to watch. It speaks of a man who knows exactly how little room the system leaves him and has learned to survive within those narrow margins.

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