All We Imagine As Light – Cannes 2024 (Film Review)
3 min read
Still Courtesy - Luxbox
At the precise mid-point of her celestial sophomore feature, Payal Kapadia disintegrates the divide between rural and urban landscapes in a singular montage. Within the entrancing intermezzo, Kapadia lures her viewers with an all-encompassing eye for the documentary tradition. Just like her radiant A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021), the film compliments and subverts illuminative visuals with audio-based testimonies. In the dream-like sequence, an anonymous voice accompanies the joyous festivities on display. The unmasked interviewee claims that Mumbai is a city of illusions; a place where people congregate to uphold their dreams of prosperity. Amongst the flow of human movement, colourful fireworks burst in the vast of night. At the snap of her fingers, Kapadia breaks the tension through a momentous cut. The literality of the edit, as symbolised through the breakage of a collective illusion, further reinforces the film's thematic underbelly. In a gripping saga about the intergenerational lives of three women living in Mumbai, All We Imagine As Light dissects the character's interiority with complex dissections on the pressures of tradition and the endless pursuit for self-fulfilment.
Within the solitude of their quotidian routines, Kapadia demonstrates the similarities of the women's lives with subtle contrast. The intersectionality of the three generations reiterate their patriarchal upbringing; women who are indoctrinated to adhere to an arranged marriage commitment. Through their stories, Kapadia scribes their experiences, their memories, and adversity without an ounce of judgment. We learn about their beauty, their aspirations, and their compassion within their medicinal field. In many regards, All We Imagine as Light almost works as an unconventional ghost story; as the men who permeate the subconscious of the three women continuously loom over traditionalist expectations. In one humorous anecdote, we learn about a supernatural experience from an elderly patient. She claims that she's experiencing visions of her late husband; an apparition who mawkishly taunts her hospitalised misfortunes. The past dictates the present in Kapadia's universe.
Continuing her collaboration with cinematographer Ranabir Das, All We Imagine As Light captures menial nursing routines with lush hues. During the film's free-flowing nocturnal sequences, the rambunctious streets of Mumbai emulate a soft glow — gleaming a heavenly pastiche to the forefront of the narrative. Kapadia's authorship provides an elegance to the edit; rendering Das' sublime cinematography with a rhythmic cadence. Over-exposed transitionary spaces behave as grandiose metaphors for self-acceptance amidst the hectic neon-glow of underexposed city-life. The angelic mise-en-scène also reinforces the multiculturalism found within the background of the piece.
In regards to the harrowing opening minutes, Kapadia commences her feature within the vibrant kinetics of Mumbai's nightlife. The camera lingers with the melancholic sounds of pitter-patter and reverberated commotion; adjoining the narrated testimonials of diasporic residents with the ambiences of a grandiose metropolis. Akin to Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983), the movement of the crowds live in harmonium with the influx of the immigrant populace. The aforementioned movement dictates the directorial scope of Kapadia's vision. All We Imagine As Light is less of a tribute to a great city, and more of a commemoration to the people who persevere within the collective imagining of a prosperous municipality. Enforcing the unpredictability of city life, the film's intricate sound-mix is subtly intrusive and erratic. Levels of non-diegetic sounds simmer into the foreground of the mystifying atmosphere. Kapadia doesn't shy away from the gentrified ugliness of the city, as fears of forced displacement ignites the necessary second-act shift.
When Kapadia eventually transitions to the tranquil environment of the film's remote coastal town, the soundscape soothes within the balmy tides of change. Kapadia implements cathartic magical realism within her under-stated finale; aptly reconciling with her character's unified empathy in the process. However, in contrast with her adventurous and boundary-pushing debut, All We Imagine As Light settles for a less radical storytelling form. Kapadia's sophomore gamble is less specific in its cinematic formalism; rarely advancing the technical trademarks of her oeuvre. Instead of resurrecting a timeless love-story amidst a revelatory student protest, All We Imagine As Light ponders within the wondrous universality of its profound text. Payal Kapadia's patient followup to her radical non-fiction feature is a meditative & restrained study on the beauty of sisterhood.
