One may imagine that Payal Kapadia’s first feature fiction All We Imagine as Light is all about finding the light at the end of the tunnel (and the tunnel may be the BAFTA!) but the film has so much enlightenment to offer at all cinematic and philosophical levels.
After winning the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival 2024, the film also won the spotlight on the stage with the cast (mostly female) flaunted and chanted as it was India’s cinema competing in the main competition after 1994. All We Imagine as Light, for me is an interesting docudrama that sheds actual light on the bleak living conditions of the Malayali nurses in Mumbai.
Opening scene of the film is juxtaposed with the resolution scene in terms of hallucinations and fantasies. This juxtaposition does creative justice in highlighting the themes of love, longing, belonging and passion. Prabha (Kani Kasruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) are the two nurses living together and reflect the stereotypical good girl and bad girl in their actions aligned with the norms of the society. Having every reason to break free the shackles of cultural standards in order to get happy momentarily, Prabha choose to stand upright, whereas Anu wants to do everything her world does not want her to, secretly.
All We Imagine as Light is an absolutely brilliant drama because of the amazing performances. Chhaya Kadam and Hridhu Haroon, though in lesser screen time than Kani Kasruti and Divya Prabha are equally eloquent in their roles. At one point every woman in the audience was in awe at the Chhaya’s resilience as an independent woman in a big city, who comes home defeated by the classicism to gulp down an old bottle of rum with her girlfriends.
This exclusive screening of All We Imagine as Light was held at Neutral in Karachi by Chalti Tasveerain, which is its cinema initiative. As a Karachiite, one can relate too much to the film because the entire narrative plot is intact by its geographical location. Later Payal Kapadia added to this thrill by revealing that her mother was born in Karachi. The problems governing a big city with too much population, hi-rise buildings, infrastructural issues, working classes, land mafias, traffic and sea seem like such relatable power-dynamic themes to the city of Karachi as well.
From the answers given by Payal as a writer and director to the questions asked by Saim Sadiq, moderator and Academy Award nominee for his film Joyland in a live Q/A session after the screening, a lot of Anu’s character can be sketched to Payal’s own journey as a filmmaker. Going to a film school with her cinematographer and wanting to escape the life around her parents’ home is something that Payal mentioned in relation to her film character. Payal mentioned how she always wanted to merge the two genres i.e. documentary and fiction into one and All We Imagine as Light is a beautiful film because of the harmony created between these two genres to form one single narrative structure.
Both Prabha and Anu’s actions are such depictive of brown girl’s problems in the society. Anu commenting hilariously but with a tinge of bitterness to the matrimonial photographs proposed by her mother is such an everyday rant of a young girl in a brown home. To me, the film was an actual satire on how we enable our women to be always subjected to patriarchy by basing all their happiness and true freedom in-line with their male relationships.
Prabha’s entire character statement was in that eye expression void held throughout the film. As a woman, a film viewer and a human, the scene where she hugged her rice cooker, present from her husband supposedly with her legs just to feel that warmness broke my heart into thousands of pieces.
Prabha, the name of the protagonist means light in Malayalam and ‘light’ in the title of the film is an actual pun, double meaning as all we imagine as light and all that Prabha actually imagines. Aesthetic choice of a continued end shot depicting lights at sea after dusk with all the women in one frame is a perfect ending to an otherwise not-so-perfect world’s depiction of the film.
Films like All We Imagine as Light are always refreshing and reassuring because it is cinema verité in a world full of commercially successful films. Payal conceived the story when she was studying film and that is truly an inspiration for all the independent filmmakers to keep trying harder when it comes to weaving extraordinary stories from ordinary life and always aim for a higher arena.
