Agra

There is no shot of Taj Mahal in Kanu Behl’s Agra. There are no sprawling gardens that dot the city of monuments. Instead, the fearless chronicler of our society’s hidden fractures and fault lines focuses on the cramped spaces, repressed desires, and the incommodious mindscapes in the mofussil town that the city holds beneath its touristy topsoil. It is the Agra that Sahir Ludhianvi referred to in his critique of the Taj Mahal when he said that the monument symbolised the exploitation of the poor by the elite. Behl is more matter-of-fact, but there is a distinctive rhythm to his storytelling. It is like the movement of a worm under the skin that is difficult to ignore or resolve.

If there’s one director who has taken a deep dive into the unlovely world created by toxic masculinity, it is Kanu Behl. His debut feature Titli, which remains his best work, gave us a corner of Delhi most of us had no idea about– a father and three brothers whose family business is car-jacking and violent disposal of bodies, if the need so arises. And if a paternal figure is anything like the one in Titli (played by the director’s own father), it stands to reason that the sons will be like him.

Most Indian moviegoers are wired to like cinema that squeezes lemonade out of life’s limes. The country has such deep social faultlines that we automatically appreciate stories looking for silver linings within them. Take the middle-class space crunch, a problem as old as time. Over the years, it’s been softened by several movie genres: the joint-family saga that emphasizes the happy chaos of communal living, the romcom or sex comedy where everyone gets a say, the love story thriving on secrets and shadows. Think Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, where a small-town household weighs in on the hero’s erectile dysfunction; think The Affair, Hardik Mehta’s short film about a married couple from a cramped Mumbai flat meeting like covert lovers after work. The movies sell nightmares as lesser dreams; we see no breathing room, but the characters reframe it as togetherness and proximity.

Guru (a fearless Mohit Agarwal), a nervous young man, sits in a cramped cyber café, the fluorescent tube above him flickering in agitation, as though mirroring the restlessness crawling under his skin. He stares at the door, hoping the woman who he had been messaging on an online sex chat room to appear. The clock keeps ticking. The cold coffee before him remains untouched. When Guru finally understands he has been stood up, humiliation spreads across his face like a slow burn. It’s a quiet scene, almost banal, but filmmaker Kanu Behl tilts it ever so slightly: the silence around Guru feels weaponised, and the space — narrow, intrusive, public — feels like a character in itself.

A young man sits in a cafe with a cold coffee in hand, his eyes searching for someone. Wearing a dull grey T-shirt, it will take him some time to realise that he’s been stood up by the person he was supposed to meet: a girl he exchanged messages with in an online sex chat room. Devastated at being rejected like this, Guru (Mohit Agarwal) gazes into a mirror after going back home, trying to wish away his less-than-affable appearance. Some of us might feel sorry for the protagonist, but then the director does a 180-degree flip on his audience, showing him doing something dastardly in the very next scene. At this point, Kanu Behl’s Agra – which premiered in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes 2023 – begins to resemble an origin story.