The city takes time away from you. That’s life. You better get used to the impermanence – a voice says in the first few minutes of Payal Kapadia’s stunning All We Imagine as Light . Much like the nature of light, the lives that populate Mumbai are flitting.
They arrive, illuminate the city with their stories, and leave, concurring with the truth that only the city, in the end, shall prevail. It’s why the first few minutes of Payal’s film captures the onset of the city’s most unforgiving seasons – the monsoon, worded by the unidentified chatter of people whispering into our ears, their resentments, their homages. For this is a city that erases and resurrects every day.
The film follows Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha), two nurses who work at a hospital and share a tiny, cramped apartment with a cat. Both have migrated from Kerala, but carry some of their homeland’s culture and conservatism with them. While Anu is caught in the throes of a love affair with a Muslim man, Prabha longs to get to know her husband, with whom she has had barely any time with since their arranged marriage. Anu is naïve and bolder, while Prabha harks back to her age and maturity as a sort of moral whip. The two decide to help Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), a widow, to return to her coastal village in Ratnagiri after being evicted from her Mumbai home.
Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, Payal’s mesmerising ode to the city stands apart as a feat of narrative minimalism. The images speak for themselves, as landscapes merge and emerge from behind the women’s personalities. Deprivation and dignity are constant battles. You can soldier on, buy into the idea of persistent hustle, or maybe you can step back, and surrender to the one relationship that asks less of you – friendship.
