Janardhan Chikkanna’s ‘Agnyathavasi’ is an intriguing crime drama that goes beyond ‘whodunit’
- Trinity Auditorium
- Apr 11
- 1 min read
The strength of the film comes from its screenplay structure, which gives us information in increments and adds an existential layer to the basic premise of a murder mystery. The rest of this review may contain spoilers.
Right from the opening, Agnyathavasi sets out to deceive the viewer, in the sense that you think it’s one thing but much later you discover that it’s something else. You think it’s a man chasing another man in a forest, because both men are running and their expressions suggest some kind of tension – but it’s not that. The way the scene ends, it ties neatly to our protagonist, played by Rangayana Raghu. He is an Inspector in a village, where nothing seems to happen – until it does. Imagine RK Narayan meets Agatha Christie, with a potent serving of existentialism and guilt and God: that’s the flavour of this intriguing crime drama set in pre-Y2K times. The thing that kicks things off is the arrival of a boxy computer with Internet connectivity, with the local postman slowly being replaced by emails.
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