New Delhi: A few years ago, Vir Das stood on stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and famously declared, “I come from two Indias.” His words stirred debate before eventually settling into the background of political discourse. But today, that same duality is playing out on our screens in starkly different portrayals of masculinity. On one side, Animal glorifies Ranbir Kapoor’s hyper-aggressive ‘alpha male,’ while on the other, Mrs. peels back the layers of quiet oppression within a traditional Indian marriage through Sanya Malhotra’s lens.
Much like Vir’s quote, these films highlight the contradictions that define modern India—where brute dominance and silent suffering exist side by side, shaping the nation’s understanding of power, gender, and identity.
Since the weekend, our social media feeds have been flooded with the controversy over India’s Got Latent—memes, reels, and trolls galore. Yet amidst the online chaos, Mrs. has quietly made its way to our algorithms, offering something far more unsettling: a mirror to the kind of men we rarely talk about. It’s an above-average remake of The Great Indian Kitchen, but its true triumph lies in how it strips down the myth of the ‘alpha male.’
Unlike the testosterone-fueled spectacle of Animalwhere brute strength and unchecked rage define manhood, Mrs. tells a quieter, far more radical story. Power isn’t wielded through fists or firearms or a passionate ballad but through tradition, routine and expectation.
Educator Dr Vikas Divyakirti, in an interview with the YouTube channel We Are Yuva, aptly put it: “The concept of alpha male does not apply to human society. It applies to animals, to wolves. Humans have moved on from the jungles. The ones who are stuck there, they are racing to be the alpha male and we need to differentiate between humans and animals.” This distinction is precisely what Mrs. underlines—while Animal glorifies a primal, almost feral version of masculinity, the Sanya Malhotra-starrer strips it down to its most domesticated and insidious form.
When Richa (Sanya Malhotra) informs her husband Diwakar (Nishant Dahiya) that she’s on her period, his immediate concern isn’t her discomfort—it’s that she’s still not pregnant. Yet, this monthly ‘setback’ grants her five days of reprieve. She momentarily escapes his entitled advances, gets meals cooked and served and—most scandalous of all—finds moments of solitude. Meanwhile, her father-in-law (Kanwaljit Singh), the ultimate patriarch, meticulously tracks the days of her cycle, eager for his daughter-in-law’s ‘duties’ to resume.
This is where Mrs. delivers its gut punch. There are no violent outbursts, no Arjan Velley-coded drama. The horror here is mundane, embedded in the suffocating predictability of everyday life. Mrs. exposes the far more insidious control embedded in tradition—the quiet kind that doesn’t need to roar to be oppressive.
And that’s the uncomfortable truth Mrs. forces us to confront: How many homes still operate on this unwritten rulebook? How many women, like Richa, are still expected to serve in silence, their existence reduced to reproductive timelines and household chores? And how many men, like Diwakar, simply replace one woman with another, never once questioning themselves?
In Animalmasculinity is loud, aggressive and destructive. In Mrs., it is passive, quiet, and just as suffocating. The film doesn’t just question what it means to be an ‘alpha male’—it dismantles the illusion altogether. Because, honestly we never needed Alpha males in the first place.
