Finding Harmony in Imperfect Harmony

In certain movies, the setting is just as crucial to the overall experience as the performances, script, or direction. I don’t think Call Me By Your Name would’ve enamored audiences so deeply if it weren’t set in the hazy hum and lush greenery of Crema, Italy. We’ve seen many movies and shows in recent years described as “love letters” to certain cities: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Chunking Express, Midnight in Paris, and Steve McQueen’s Blitz.

Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light opens with a montage of the people of Mumbai, constantly in transit, making their way through the city all with tired, sullen expressions across their faces. Voiceovers from different people let us hear their opinions on their home city, with one man saying “I’m afraid to call it my home.” Kapadia’s vision of Mumbai is a hope vacuum, where people are overworked, the poor are kept separate from the rich, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. The film, while it does end on a hopeful note, is quite pessimistic in its views of Mumbai, as if the only chance at happiness depends on your means to escape from the city. It’s a story of disconnection, and how, despite how impervious we try to make ourselves, we all share the very basic human need of interpersonal relationships, whatever form they come in.

‘All We Imagine as Light’ Is a Story of Human Connection

Following its win at Cannes for the Grand Prix award, All We Imagine as Light is a somber, slow drama that follows Prabha (Kani Kusruti), a serious and reserved nurse living and working in Mumbai, as her husband (who she met in an arranged marriage) lives in Germany, avoiding her calls and making up for it by sending a rice cooker with no note. Prabha lives with Anu (Divya Prabha), a younger and livelier nurse who is hiding her relationship with a young Muslim man, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) as her parents want to arrange for her to wed a fellow Hindu. It’s a bleak existence for both of them, and this has formed a hard outer layer in Prabha, who lashes out at Abu when she’s overly friendly with a doctor who clearly likes Prabha. Their colleague, Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), is being pushed out by gangsters so they can turn her home into apartments for the wealthy.

Every facet of the city brings nothing but disappointment to these characters. For most of the film, Kapadia will follow the cast as they make their way through the city, with the background almost always unfocused. A voiceover refers to a constant feeling of impermanence and the themes of displacement and transience bleed into every frame. Anu’s only solace is her clandestine meetings with Shiaz, while Prabha rejects the doctor’s advances despite feeling utterly alone. He tells her he’s leaving the city, as he still can’t remember his way home even though he’s lived there for six months. He blames the language barrier, but this perpetuates Kapadia’s framing of Mumbai as an overpopulated but deeply lonely place that no one should call home. “It’s a city of illusions,” he says to her, as if any semblance of happiness in the city isn’t genuine; it also hints at the movie’s title and grand thesis of the ways humans will distort their reality to find something to fight for.

It’s heartening to see a female-directed and starring Indian film that deals with abstract feelings garner so much attention from critics. It’s a deeply soulful movie that might seem cold at first, but eventually reveals itself to be a poetically touching movie about some of the most primal feelings humans experience. It just requires a good amount of patience. That said, there are sequences when it feels Kapadia is indulging too much in her visual language, and there are scenes that feel overly long without anything happening plot-wise. At just under two hours, the movie certainly could’ve shaved off 20 minutes and still landed its lyrical punch. But again, the destination is worth the journey, and it offers a viewing experience that feels earned in the end.