Kodiyettam (Ascent, 1977) is set in the 1970s, at a time when the Nehruvian dream had floundered in India and there was widespread discontent in the country. The 1964 split in the Communist Party along with the failure of political reforms in Kerala had led to a loss of faith in all governmental institutions and state-sponsored initiatives. But other than a few cursory references to political rallies and the expulsion of a Party member, the film makes no allusion to the events that were being hotly discussed and debated. Instead, Gopalakrishnan focuses on a village in Kerala where an unrepentant, regressive patriarchal culture has turned its back on modernity and all forms of progressive reform. Shaped by the legacy of feudalism, it is a culture of wasteful self-indulgence and degrading machismo. The men live suspended in a time-warp, outside all norms of productive social living—a community of outsiders. They are repeatedly associated with mindless consumption and a demeaning corporeality that symbolizes their depraved form of otherness. Some are callous fathers and husbands; others cheat on their wives. A few have short fuses that ignite suddenly and unpredictably. Most of their pathetic displays of power are directed at women. Emotionally and morally stunted, these men blindly subscribe to an oppressive ideology of self-serving excess.

Gopalakrishnan's critique of masculinity, then, is directed at an entire culture, a whole way of life. Since the people in the film are incapable of any collective form of redress, he invests in the individual's potential for emancipation and makes him a symbol of hope for the community at large. His protagonist, Sankarankutty, is an orphan in his early thirties who clings to an infantile state, refusing to grow up and become a man (as his mother-in-law subsequently laments). In relation to the other males, his symptoms are relatively minor, but they can be traced to the same malaise that has infected them all. Compared to these men, he is merely simple, foolish and naïve.