Kathapurushan (Man of the Story, 1995) is arguably Gopalakrishnan's most ambitious film, epic in scale, intimate in tone and covering nearly forty-five years of Kerala's history through the eyes of his protagonist, Kunjunni. He has called the film “an emotional journey through time and history” to distinguish it from a socio-historical document, which it superficially resembles. Accordingly, all key historical events are kept off-screen. It is thus a personal film that draws on Gopalakrishnan's life and memories of the time, although it is not autobiographical in the strict sense of the term.

Kathapurushan begins with Kunjunni's birth and ends with the publication and subsequent banning of his first novel, The Hard Consonants. The film is primarily a cinematic Bildungsroman that charts the emotional and psychological evolution of a man and his consciousness and is framed by some of the key events that have shaped Kerala's modernity. Kunjunni belongs to an old feudal, land-owning family that is in decline as a result of the momentous reforms that have dramatically changed Kerala's political landscape. Thus we have another narrative about the vestigial life, except that its subject is not human decadence. Kunjunni is neither apathetic like Unni nor malignant like Patelar, nor does he hold himself aloof from the forces of modernity. Instead, he displays a progressive outlook that he uses to align himself with the historical forces that are transforming his home state. He is helped in this respect by his family, which practices an enlightened form of feudalism— feudalism with a human face. Thus Kathapurushan is Gopalakrishnan's most upbeat and optimistic film, where the dream of emancipation seems to be within our grasp. Mukhamukham was about the abject failure of that dream in relation to a demoralized community hopelessly stuck in time, but Kunjunni's choices enable him to move forward with time into a future that contains the potential for personal growth and meaningful action.