Last update:November 22, 2024, 08:21 IST

All We Imagine As Light Movie Review: Payal Kapadia’s film explores intimacy, self-discovery and the authentic charm of Mumbai with soul.

All We Imagine As Light is in theaters now.

Everything we imagine as a light film review: It may be difficult to define All We Imagine As Light in a few words, because life itself is not easy, especially in a city like Mumbai. In the film, Payal Kapadia aptly observes that Mumbai is a city of illusions, not dreams. So, before you assume that his film, where the city almost comes to life as a character, is a love letter to Mumbai, let’s clarify: that’s not entirely true. What it offers is a raw reflection of the island metropolis. Rather than presenting a sanitized and shiny version of Mumbai, Kapadia explores its grimy and rainy side, where the paradox of loneliness and belonging weighs heavily, like petrichor after the first showers.

All We Imagine As Light revolves around the lives of three women – Prabha, Parvaty and Anu – who all work in the same city hospital. While Prabha is a senior nurse, Anu is her junior who is learning the ropes and still finds herself squirming at the smell of a placenta. Parvaty, for her part, is a cook at the hospital. Prabha and Anu share a small apartment across town. Prabha has been estranged from her husband for almost a decade. He worked in a factory in Germany and left shortly after their marriage. They are barely in contact with each other. A Malayalam doctor at the hospital is attracted to Prabha but she knows her limits.

Anu is a carefree and unambitious young woman who is under pressure to meet boys for an arranged marriage. But she decides to live her life on her own terms and falls in love with a Muslim boy named Shiaz. After work, she often runs away with him, wandering Mumbai’s crowded lanes, laughing at street food and occasionally running into him at a friend’s empty apartment. Parvaty, a widow, struggles not to lose her house to a large builder who wants to build a skyscraper. In an alien city, they are each other’s confidants and yet some of their deepest secrets are hidden in a locker.

Honestly, there’s not much more to All We Imagine As Light. It is the inner journeys of these characters that move the plot forward. But Payal deserves the biggest applause for weaving a narrative like this that keeps you engaged throughout. It’s full of long, lingering shots and a lot of stillness that gives you the chance to peek into the souls of these characters. The world she creates almost smells of freshly caught mackerel and salty sea breezes. And it is in this world that Prabha, Parvaty and Anu thrive, flourish and delight.

In a scene inside Parvaty’s village house, the trio is seen gulping down whiskey and Prabha turns into a spectator as Parvaty and Anu let loose and dance to Daiya Yeh Main Kahan Phasi. It reminds you how the cast of the film broke out dancing to Kala Chashma and Mundian To Bach Ke on the red carpet of the Cannes International Film Festival, as they celebrated All We Imagine As Light, becoming the first Indian film to enter competition. at the cinema gala in 30 years. It’s these little moments that make the film a great watch.

The film begins as a docudrama and Payal constructs the narrative through a poetic lens. Some of Prabha’s close-ups are stunning, almost like a portrait. She is an extremely difficult character to describe but there are far too many parallels between her and the city of Mumbai. She won’t throw your arms around you from time to time, but can still be seen as selfless, tolerant and warm. Her character story takes an interesting turn when she discovers that her husband, who she hasn’t spoken to in years, sent her an expensive rice cooker from Germany.

Prabha is also lonely but that doesn’t make her bitter. We can never tell if she wants a mate and if she is jealous of Anu, because she is almost a mother figure to her. Payal uses a lot of darkness to give the film a moody and dark mood. But Prabha’s close-ups brighten each frame, almost creating a chiaroscuro effect. Cinematographer Ranabir Das also deserves credit for capturing the nuances and chaos of Mumbai with aplomb. And some of these shots are accentuated by Dhritiman Das and Topshe’s piano score, which ultimately engulfs the discordant soundscape of Mumbai.

Ranabir’s lenses also focus a lot on the skin of the characters. The droplets of sweat and rain on Prabha’s face and the goosebumps on Shiaz’s chest as he makes love to Anu in the middle of a jungle speak a thousand words. Everything we imagine as light, while it captures the cacophony of Mumbai, is all about subtlety. Show more and tell less is Payal’s mantra and she achieves it wonderfully. Even while exploring the Hindu-Muslim love angle between Anu and Shiaz, Payal stays true to the tenderness, which almost becomes a looming motif in the film. Never for once does the director transform this sub-theme into political dialogue.

In All We Imagine As Light, the characters belong to the margins of society – the have-nots in a city where the gap between them and the haves widens with each financial year. However, Payal avoids any overt comments. Much like Mumbai, a truly cosmopolitan city, the film features Prabha and Anu speaking in Malayalam, Parvaty in Marathi, and occasional migrant voiceovers in Bengali and Bihari. The processing and texture of the film is so rich that it gives it an element of true cinematic magic.

Kani Kusruti as Prabha, Divya Prabha as Anu and Chhaya Kadam as Parvaty are terrific. They enhance silences and pauses and keep you engaged even when sitting by the beach, looking out to sea and not speaking. Payal struck gold with her debut feature and it is a film filled with so much soul that must be watched for its subtlety, nuances, tenderness and deep introspection of intimacy, space and of self-discovery, without making a market out of it.