Agra Kanu Behl’s Agra Is The Other Side Of the Taj Mahal
Rating: ****
There must be some twisted irony in Kanu Behl naming his fourth feature Agra. From the splendour associated with the city,to the squalor, emotional and locational,of Behl’s film, is a journey into the heart of darkness with no way out.
Kanu Behl’s Agra is a very ugly film, and I do mean that in a positive way. The screenplay written by Behl and Atika Chohan, spares us none of the wretchedness that is embedded at the heart of these characters. To describe the family at the heart of this inky-dark plot as dysfunctional would be a gross understatement.
When we first meet the film’s 25-year old protagonist Guru(Mohit Agarwal) he is in a state of copulatory frenzy with a woman who transforms into a giant-sized rat under him as he desperately tries to do his deed.Guru has an imaginary girlfriend . Whether he is schizophrenic or just emotionally overwrought, we will never know.
Something is seriously amiss here. Kanu Behl builds on Guri’s psychological and sexual decadence with lashing persuasiveness. Guru needs serious help. But his parents have their own crises to grapple with. His mother(Vibha Chibber, excellent) lives on the groundfloor with Guru while his father(Rahul Roy, unrecognizable) has moved upstairs with another woman(Sonal Jha) whom Guru calls ‘Aunty’.
It is a seriously squalid wretchedly unhappy situation , with Guru at one point towards the beginning of the film threatening to consume poison after a violent fight with his mother.
Some time later he tries to rape his cousin Chhavi(Aanchal Goswami) a dentist looking for teeth in her life and career, like everyone else in the film.
By the time we reach this point in the disagreeable proceedings we are so sickened by the gross anomaly of this family’s existence that we wonder when and where the redemptive arc will begin.
Luckily for us, it does, when Guru meets a physically disabled owner of a rundown internet café(the outer world of the film matches the ramshackle characters’ inner world) Priti(Priyanka Bose, outstanding ) .
Guru stalks Priti . There is a long seduction sequence to the accompaniment of Nazar ke saamne jigar ke paas from Mahesh Bhatt’s Aashiqui, which coincidentally starred Rahul Roy who plays Guru’ father.
Is Guru after Priti for her property, or for sex? Or maybe both. The narrative doesn’t give Guru any benefit of the doubt. His degenerative spirit dominates his actions , including the frenetic sex act,as well as the film’s spirit of indefatigable decadence, rendering Agra one of the most pessimistic view of the North Indian working class since Kanu Behl’s Titli.
Agra doesn’t dilute the sting of existence at the fringe of the middleclass. There is no humour in the world that Behl’s character inhabit. To pause for laughter in a universe of uninterrupted chaos would be to disrespect the misery of the characters. This, Agra, never does.
