In the urban streets of Mumbai, people cram together in search of the life that modernity promises. But what if that promise is false? All We Imagine As Light is a tenderly told story about two women’s passion and desire – how they express it in opposite ways, but find themselves similarly caged. To them, Mumbai is home, but it’s also a source of isolation. Writer-director Payal Kapadia has a history in documentary, and her fiction feature debut has the verité eye of real life. At times, Kapadia shoots the city with all the romance of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, but she’s not as sentimental. Incredibly intimate, All We Imagine As Light deftly explores the worlds of its protagonists: ethereal and idealist, but also lonely and ruthlessly capitalistic. Part love story, part cautionary tale, the film expertly layers its narrative between the specific and the universal.
Our two lead actresses are Kani Kuruti and Divya Prabha, whose portrayals of longing and remorse are amongst the best acting you’ll see all year. Kuruti is Prabha, a nurse in the OBGYN wing of the local hospital. Prabha is modest, soft-spoken, and possesses an ultra-competence in her work. Her husband lives in Germany, and she hasn’t heard from him in over a year. A doctor at the hospital, Manoj (Azees Nedumangad), presents a renewed chance for romance, but she can’t understand her own emotions, with her husband’s abandonment leaving emotional scars. Divya Prabha plays Anu, Prabha’s younger, feistier roommate. Anu is also a nurse, but she has a streak of rebellion in her. Her interests lie in her own happiness, which includes her secret affair with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), a young Muslim whose religion puts him at odds with her devout Hindu parents.
Their lives take a turn when they get a mysterious, unaddressed package in the mail. It’s from Germany, but Prabha’s husband didn’t leave a return address, if it is him. Inside the box is an expensive rice cooker, an anonymous showing of affection that knocks Prabha off her axis. She settles into work, trying to avoid Manoj’s soft advances and Anu’s promiscuity. She decides to help Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), the hospital’s cook, whose facing eviction from land developers looking to erect luxury homes. Parvaty has lived in her home for over two decades, but it was in her husband’s name, and now that he’s dead, she doesn’t have a legal case. Prabha provides her with free legal counsel and emotional support, doing her best to fight the city’s rapid gentrification. When Prabha and Anu travel with Parvaty to her rural village outside Mumbai, they find their lives shifting outside of society’s stringent borders and into the surreal.
The dose of magical realism in the film’s third act is superbly executed, and Kapadia seamlessly blends it into the film’s original authenticity. It helps that her camera (cinematography by Ranabir Das) has an eye for the otherworldly beauty of its setting. This is the central contradiction, Mumbai is a hub of Indian multiculturalism, a portrait of the country’s many languages, cultures and religions. That said, it still finds itself bound by its most dogmatic forces. The same force that binds Prabha to a man she barely knows (in an arranged marriage), is also the one that forces Anu to keep her relationship with Shiaz a deathly secret. Prabha shields her emotions as a mode of self-protection, while Anu’s defiance is a ruse to give herself, at the very least, the illusion of agency.
Woven into the film’s larger points on gentrification, our heroines’ stories are tales of women betrayed by the Western promise, fooled into believing that progress for capital was progress for all. The film’s first two thirds are spirited documents of people finding emotional fulfillment where they can, but the film’s genius comes in its final forty-five minutes, where Prabha and Anu venture into the trees and the sea, and discover they’ve only scratched the surface of their own self-expression. For Anu, it’s an opportunity to finally be with Shiaz without the judgmental eyes of their families. For Prabha, she gets an unlikely chance to find closure with a man who is more like a stranger than a husband. How Kapadia accomplishes these two things would be hard to define, if I even wanted to do that. Like all great films, All We Imagine As Light is meant to be experienced, not explained.
The parallel narratives of Prabha and Anu function in a perfect point-counterpoint progression. Their differences strengthen their emotional bond, but it also presents some resentment. Anu admires Prabha’s sensibility and work ethic, while Prabha envies her young roommates passion and bravery. They find love for one another through their common goal of surviving their lives with their souls intact. Kusruti is a veteran actress whose steady hand sets the tenor of the movie’s lo-fi tone and rhythm, while Divya Prabha gives the movie a much needed wild card, a mark of unpredictability and dramatic tension. Their performances play off of each other, even when they aren’t sharing scenes, with their decisions made with the other in mind, and their fates tied together. It’s a remarkable dual performance, tied beautifully with a director’s vision, tying the micro with the macro in a beautiful tapestry.
Kapadia keeps her screenplay dramatically potent even if its action is understated. At different points in the film, Prabha and Anu apologize to one another in scenes filled with all the vibrance of a George Miller road chase. The storytelling technique recalls Jane Campion, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and most directly Abbas Kiarostami. So, a truly international influence. But Kapadia’s voice still feels singular and honest. Perhaps that’s why India has chosen not to submit this film as it’s International Oscar submission, under accusations of not being “Indian enough”. I’m not a good judge of how actually authentic a film is about life in Mumbai, but I do have thoughts on how a movie can reflect life in all its pain and gifts. All We Imagine As Light is about it all, as it both embraces its setting and overcomes it. This story could take place anywhere, but Kapadia puts it in Mumbai, and takes full advantage of that fact.
Written and Directed by Payal Kapadia