Film, Film Review, IFFBoston

REVIEW: All We Imagine As Light (2024) Dir. Payal Kapadia

Opens Friday, 1/24 @ Coolidge

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All We Imagine As Light is most effective in its intimacy, in its slowness, in minor yet significant moments. The setting is palpable in the cinematography – colorful lights become a haze, the mild heat and humidity flood the screen. Payal Kapadia’s film profoundly captures narratives of romance and friendship with immense heart and intrinsic subtlety, illustrating the ways our spanning lives intersect with one another in small yet powerful ways. I’ve always had an affinity for films that resist the notion of instant gratification, that see cinematic storytelling as something that can be slow, or instructive, or difficult. Films that give audiences something to sit with besides just entertainment. This isn’t to say that All We Imagine As Light isn’t entertaining – it’s a delightful watch, but it’s entertaining not in the sense that it appeases attention spans and overloads the senses, rather the opposite. It takes time to build and create the characters that anchor the story, it uses slowness, voiceovers, and the full landscape of Mumbai and Ratnagiri, to cultivate a soulful story and an absolutely delightful watch. 

All We Imagine As Light chronicles three women working in a hospital in Mumbai in different stages of their life. Prabha (Kani Kusruti) is rather strict and uptight, a skilled nurse, still pining over her husband whom she is no longer in contact with, as he is working abroad in Germany. Anu (Divya Prabha) is her younger roommate, also a nurse, swept up in a youthful, secret romance with a Muslim man, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) is a cook in the hospital, being evicted as her building is set to be destroyed and replaced by an expensive high rise. She decides to relocate back to her village in Ratnagiri, and Prabha and Anu go with her and help her move. 

It’s intimidating to review a film as subtly powerful as All We Imagine As Light. It doesn’t rely on great romantic swells or moments of drama to anchor the emotion and make the film visceral – it’s the specific moments of connection and intimacy that characterize the women and their relationships so well. Prabha’s selflessness is exhibited in her work as a nurse, instructing others, treating her patients with tenderness and care. Anu’s youthfulness and exuberance bursts in her dates with Shiaz, and her relationship living with Prabha. Parvaty’s wisdom and humility emerges alongside her sharp zest for life in comedic moments with Prabha and Anu. Kapadia depicts the universality of friendship and romantic connection through specific, intimate moments. These include Prabha and Parvaty throwing rocks at a sign advertising the new building replacing the one Parvaty lived in, the rice cooker sent anonymously to Prabha and Anu’s apartment, and the beautifully-shot sex scene between Anu and Shiaz. 

The film’s keen use of voiceover emphasizes the intersecting of lives, the value in humanity in each specific moment. Kapadia has cultivated a story with universal sentiments of love and connection, expressing it not only through her respectful and intimate directorial gaze, but in the bonds between these women. The community and solidarity that Prabha, Anu, and Parvaty share so intimately for each other is the essence of the film, the culmination of their tensions is soft and gentle, their support for one another is where we understand openness and change in their characters. These actions and relationships are not examples of selflessness necessarily, it’s not like doing favors for someone or like donating to charity – it is being a part of a supportive community. The throughline of class – particularly with Parvaty’s storyline – isn’t directly addressed, rather it’s a part of the fabric that characterizes the lives of these women, that makes their relationships with one another even more important. 

All We Imagine As Light is a stunning Indian independent that demonstrates slow, subtle aches of beauty and tenderness in friendship and community. It’s timeless and genuine, an extremely delightful watch that leans into and celebrates the universal power of cinema at its most raw, and most beautiful. 

All We Imagine as Light
2024
dir. Payal Kapadia
118 min.

Opens Friday, 1/24 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre, West Newton Cinema, and Apple Cinemas Cambridge
This review originally ran following the film’s screening at IFFBoston Fall Focus

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