'Agnyathavasi' Movie Review: This Murky Mystery Is Compromised by A Heavy Hand

Director: Janardhan Chikkanna
Writer: PM Krishna Raj
Cast: Rangayana Raghu, Siddu Moolimani, Paavana Gowda, Sharath Lohithashwa, Ravishankar Gowda
Language: Kannada

The term 'Agnyathavasi' is made up of two words: Agnyatha, meaning an obscure or unknown entity, and Vasi (or Vaasi), meaning a dweller. In Janardhan Chikkanna’s latest film of the same name, a man’s mental exile slowly comes to the fore when a sudden death occurs in his quaint Malnad village. The death could be easily written off as innocuous, but the said man (the nameless character played by Rangayana Raghu), who also happens to be a police inspector, catches a whiff of something foul at play.

How does he spot that when everyone around him seems clueless? The answer, as it turns out, lies in the dark corners of his mind, and whether he likes it or not, the Agnyathavasi buried deep inside him must emerge to solve the puzzle.

The year is 1999 and India, let alone the village, is yet to settle into the world of technology and the Internet, and everything in the air feels simple and transparent. A computer makes its way into one of the homes nevertheless because of a zealous and curious kid named Rohit (Siddu Moolimani), who soon evolves as the village folk’s digital postman by sending and receiving emails from friends and family across the world.

The computer becomes an interesting device to probe for Janardhan and writer PM Krishna Raj. The film uses the naïveté of the era to good effect in that nobody wonders how the machine is invading privacy, as well as (indirectly) disclosing ghastly secrets. The seemingly unassuming bystander triggers a cascading effect that perhaps began many years ago but is sure to conclude in the present, engulfing multiple lives, including those of a local girl Pankaja (Paavana Gowda), a landlord Srinivasaiah (Sharath Lohithashwa) and the Inspector.

Agnyathavasi unfolds in a fragmented manner akin to the Rashomon method (only loosely), wherein the same pivotal moment is arrived at from different perspectives. At the outset, this proves to be a useful technique to give the characters more precedence than the plot, and much of the runtime in the first half is spent creating a mood of sorts. We gather piece by piece who the Inspector is and what he withholds in his heart. We meet the person that Pankaja is and how Rohit enters her life to offer the solace she has been looking for. We also get to see the village from different vantage points to imagine and weave together a collective, interdependent livelihood.

A still from 'Agnyathavasi'

The same technique, however, soon becomes a means to over-stylise the narrative instead of helping it. The deliberate lack of linearity doesn’t allow us to get intimately close to the principal characters who shuttle in and out of our purview to only complicate matters, but rarely to enhance the intensity or the tension of the drama.

One of the foibles of this approach shows up in the Pankaja and Rohit portion: while the romantic undercurrent (even if it is largely one-sided) between them is palpable and makes up for many resonant moments, the aesthetics-heavy storytelling sidelines the most crucial character of the Inspector. As a result, the film is forced to pronounce certain key elements towards the end because it never afforded itself the runtime to explore this character. And for a film titled Agnyathavasi, the deep investigation of its anchor player was always going to be paramount. Even the plot starts to throw up glaring logical inconsistencies that do not help the film.

Rangayana has consistently proven his effortless control over both restraint and theatricality. The role of the Inspector feels right up his alley, weighed down with lingering sadness yet evoking rare wisdom, and the senior actor is once again at the top of his game. Siddu, Ravishankar Gowda and Paavana, too, imbue their respective characters with life; Siddu, in particular, walks away with some of the best-written scenes. Where they are all undone, though, is with the script emphasising flair over depth.

Cinematographer Advaitha Gurumurthy (one of producer Hemanth M Rao’s chief collaborators so far) imagines this world with a sense of nostalgia. In the company of colourist Prateek Mahesh, he uses a highly-saturated colour palette that transports us to a time and place that looks romanticised as well as dreamlike. Charan Raj’s music is a huge contributor to how the narrative ebbs and flows, although it ends up exaggerating a few dramatic moments.

Agnyathavasi is a novel attempt at reimagining an event of crime and its aftermath by deconstructing it. It is technically sound and has many exciting well-crafted sequences scattered across its crisp 122-minute runtime. But the film falters in multiple places because of indulgence and as a result, doesn't end up being the fascinating character study that it should have been.