If there’s one thing that’s become clear with the success that Pink has enjoyed, both in terms of box office and the conversations started, it is that as audiences, we’re capable of nuance. In this patriarchal age, men play an important role and to cast them as the opposition serves no purpose. Not all men seek to be patriarchal. Some question the stereotypes and male domination that has guided society for generations. They’ve joined the conversation, albeit in their own flawed manner, that women feminists started.

Take Amitabh Bachchan, for instance, who has been justifiably praised for both his decision to act in Pink and his performance in the film. Before the film’s release, Bachchan wrote an open letter to his granddaughters that served to make everyone acutely critical of the character he plays in the film. Bachchan’s performance as the lawyer Deepak Sehgal has been scrutinised with a microscope. For instance, there are scenes that show him wandering around wearing a mask and staring out of his window or balcony, into the girls’ home. Some have interpreted this as stalker behavior, but that is insensitive and ageist. Suffering from mental illness and burdened with a terminally-ill wife, a man vacantly staring out of his window or hanging around a park bench at dusk could be one afraid to go home, a tortured soul in need of sympathy. However, for many women, who have been at the receiving end of unwanted attention from neighbours, colleagues and other ‘dirty old men’, fear is a natural response and Sehgal bears – perhaps without any personal wrongdoing – the burden of sins perpetrated by his gender.

Deepak Sehgal is not a traditional male saviour who uses his fists or patriarchal power, and neither is he interested in being a hero. When Minal (the lead character in Pink, played by Taapsee Pannu) is abducted in the park, he does not sprint to the back gate, commandeer a car and set out in chase. Instead, he behaves like a good citizen and calls the cops. Admittedly his use of courtroom rhetoric, pitched at Bollywood levels of melodrama, would hardly be acceptable before a real judge, but Sehgal is actually addressing the audience, rather than courtroom. The rules he rattles out lack subtlety, but perhaps they need to be reiterated for an audience that finds the basic concepts of consent and choice of clothing novel and contentious.

Still, commercial considerations and positive messages notwithstanding, the film with its relentless mansplaining, startling the female witness on stand with questions about her sexual history (matters that can be discussed in the court only with her informed consent) transcends the rules it sets out to enforce. It veers dangerously close to revolving around the male savior as hero, and the girls’ courage – extraordinary in the circumstances – becomes an adjunct.

The point that Pink does make successfully is that men don’t always buttress patriarchy and women don’t necessarily oppose it. The scene in which Sehgal exposes the woman police officer who has been harassing Minal is ample proof of this.  So is the landlord, who follows through his contract with the girls, in the face of tremendous pressure. If only this film about women’s empowerment hadn’t succumbed to stereotype and opted to title the film after a colour assigned arbitrarily to women.

It’s this sort of mixture of tokenism and good intentions that makes Bollywood such a difficult terrain to navigate as a feminist. Shah Rukh Khan’s initiative to have the leading lady’s name before his in the credits is commendable, but doesn’t address the more critical issue of the wage gap, for instance. Bollywood is generations away from establishing pay parity and few actors can credibly claim to be pushing this agenda.

Khan has tried on other feminist avatars. In Chak De, he played a man pushing a maverick group of women out of their comfort zone and on to the road to excellence. It is a classic setting for mansplaining for he is the coach, the one who knows it all. Yet somehow, the character manages a juggling act, using the femaleness of the players in their favour without being exploitative. It is a difficult character to navigate. The angst of the women is a given and he does not deny this, merely works out a way to put this to use; reminding them of the many real injustices they have faced out in the world, refusing to see gender in the players, yet empathising with a married goal keeper’s pressures and recognising the kind of skewed system that informs a senior player’s offer of sex. The goal of Chak De is not equality, but excellence at any cost.

The advances are small and slower than we would like, but there is a certain evolution taking place among the storytellers in Bollywood. For instance, Karan Johar – known for his traditional misogynistic Indian romances – created characters in Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna that questioned patriarchal standards. In a society where the burden of morality lies on the woman, Maya was encouraged to walk out of her marriage by none other than her father-in-law, played by Bachchan again. Years later, Bachchan as the cantankerous father in Piku, spoke openly of his daughter’s sexuality and encouraged her reject the idea that she needs a husband (admittedly the underlying motive was to keep her as daddy’s little girl). The first didn’t work with audiences while the second did. Perhaps the audience evolved or maybe it was the storytelling. Maybe it was a combination of both.

Increasingly, there are characters, even in the most clichéd and incredible of plots, whose trajectories inspire hope. Aditya from Jab We Met, can love a girl, admit it to her, be a pal, help her overcome heartbreak and continue with his life even if she doesn’t love him. That he loves her and she doesn’t, is not her problem and he tells her as much. Written and performed with less sensitivity, and he would have been a stalker, but he is a new age man who sees a person with her own mind in the woman he loves. In Baar Baar Dekho, the leading man starts as privileged male living in his insular world, but as the film progresses, he sees the errors of his ways, and recognises that he cannot leave the burden of making a marriage work on his wife. That he admits to errors in the first place is a huge leap in the reel and real world of male ego and entitlement. This film lays out what were once a woman’s concerns of men and marriage, and its victory is getting the leading man to tackle them.

It may be a while before men (and women) plumb the shallows of our society’s confused feminism. After all, men’s relationship to feminism is a complicated one. They run the risk of dominating and appropriating a narrative of which they have no first-hand experience.  Even though the enemy is conventional and entitled manliness, not all men are the enemy.