Stream It Or Skip It: ‘All We Imagine as Light’ on The Criterion Channel, an Engrossingly Beautiful Story of Three Women Feeling Isolated in Mumbai

By John Serba

All We Imagine as Light’s debut on The Criterion Channel puts it right on track to be a future arthouse classic. Weirdly excluded from Oscar shortlists (for boring, procedural and/or political reasons apparently having to do with its combination French/Indian production), the film cements Indian writer/director Payal Kapadia as an artist of significant insights, and with an extraordinary eye for lush, suggestive imagery. Kapadia’s second feature-length film (the first being 2021’s similarly dreamily titled A Night of Knowing Nothing, a documentary), All We Imagine as Light focuses on three women from small villages who now live in Mumbai, a city so dense and bustling that being surrounded by so many people only feeds their sense of isolation. This is a methodically paced film that requires a bit of patience, but once you coalesce with its humming rhythms, it’s rich with dramatic and spiritual rewards.

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Kapadia opens All We Imagine as Light as if it were a documentary: A long tracking shot of pre-dawn bustle on the streets of Mumbai, as various, anonymous residents share their insights and experiences of the city via voiceover. “The city takes time away from you. That’s life. You better get used to impermanence,” one voice says with great wisdom. The camera stops on Prabha (Kani Kusruti), who takes the train to a hospital where she works as a lead nurse; read meaning as you will into the scene in which she instructs trainees on how to properly dispose of a placenta, and matter-of-factly says that the job requires them to tolerate the unpleasant odor. 

Her shift complete, Prabha is walked to the train platform by Dr. Manoj (Azees Nedumangad), who’s clearly sweet on her. He gives her a notebook with one of his poems in it, and asks her to wait until later to read it. She’s kind to him, but if she harbors any feelings, she hides it beneath a reserved exterior – a product of a complicated situation in which her husband from an arranged marriage moved to Germany for a job not long after the wedding, leaving her tethered to a commitment, but emotionally unmoored and directionless. He used to call, but she hasn’t heard from him in more than a year. She gets a package in the mail with no note or return address; inside is a rice cooker with a stamp indicating it was made in Germany. It must be a gift from him? She tries calling him, but he doesn’t answer. One sleepless night, Prabha gets out of bed, squats on the floor, pulls the rice cooker from beneath a fixture and embraces it like a lost child just found.

Prabha doesn’t fraternize with the other nurses, who invite her to their regular trips to the cinema despite knowing she’ll turn it down. One of her coworkers is Anu (Divya Prabha), younger by maybe a decade (or maybe two), a bored and restless receptionist at the hospital. They’re roommates, sharing a tiny apartment with a pregnant cat, their narrow cots situated head-to-head in a corner. Anu regularly sneaks off for a frowned-upon interfaith romance with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), who’s Muslim. Prabha mothers her a bit, telling her she’s the object of derisive gossip and chastising her for her actions; later, she’ll apologize. Anu and Shiaz struggle to find a moment of solitude, making out on a park bench as men play soccer behind them. She buys a burqa so she may traverse his neighborhood without hassle for a sexual rendezvous, but the date is scuttled when Shiaz’s parents’ plans are canceled.

Prabha’s other confidant is Parvathy (Chhaya Kadam), who’s older by maybe a decade (or maybe two), and works in the hospital’s kitchen. Recently widowed, Parvathy is about to be evicted after 22 years by a landlord who’s converting the building into upscale apartments “for the privileged,” as a crass billboard reads. Prabha connects Parvathy with a lawyer, but she has no legal standing to avoid eviction, because any documents proving her residency are all in her husband’s name. Her hands tied, she decides to move back to her rural seaside village, where the all-day/all-night commotion and density of Mumbai, in all its writhing, quasi-plasmic glory, is replaced by sloshing waves and robust ocean winds, and a quaint cafe where plastic tables and chairs sit with feet in the sand, and a boy waiter dances passionately to the music in his headphones, beneath a few strings of lights glowing neon in the warm, clear night.

Photo: Everett Collection

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Kapadia’s naturalist style occasionally skews toward magical realism, like a Kelly Reichardt film (e.g. First Cow or Wendy and Lucy) that flirts with being an Apichatpong Weerasethakul film (e.g. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives).

Performance Worth Watching: Kusruti’s presence in this film is captivating and layered with emotion; she upholds a firm, responsible and pragmatic exterior while secretly indulging what’s most likely an impossible dream. It’s acting within acting, playing a character within a character, and the performance itself is metaphorical in its duality. 

Memorable Dialogue: One of the anonymous-voiceover observations: “You have to believe the illusion, or else you’ll go mad.”

Sex and Skin: Some mostly incidental nudity, and a significantly erotic sex scene that shows very little yet feels incredibly… hot.

Photo: Everett Collection

Our Take: Rarely does a filmmaker so intricately and profoundly mesh theme, visuals, sound and performance like Kapadia does with All We Imagine as Light. It’s a thoroughly deliberate film, every shot and camera movement carefully considered, all functioning in the service of an organic, naturalist style – a critical balancing act that this unassuming auteur achieves, beautifully and astonishingly. Kapadia eases us into the rhythms of urban life in Mumbai, slow-zooming into her characters’ sphere, and even though she’s in no rush to establish her intent, we’re nevertheless immersed and involved, soon to be invested in the interior lives of Prabha, Anu and, to a slightly lesser extent, Parvathy. 

As the title so poetically states, Kapadia’s use of light is crucial to establishing mood and implying character nuances that aren’t verbally expressed; silence, or at least a lack of dialogue, plays a key role in communicating the essence of setting, be it Mumbai or the Ratnagiri seaside. Wind and rain, sirens and clacking trains, establish the environment as a living character influencing the bittersweetness of Prabha and Anu’s quiet predicaments, which teeter on the edge of self-discovery and liberation – the former feels trapped by the sad reality of her marriage, while the latter tries to avoid the same situation, and together, they make fun of the photos of possible suitors Anu’s mother sends. In a scene deep in the film, Prabha tells Anu, “You can’t escape your fate,” but their current setting, a modest and lovely beach that’s a daylong bus ride from Mumbai, may be directly contradicting that assertion. I’m not sure Prabha believes that statement is true, anyway.

Cinematographer Ranabir Das captures searingly gorgeous and suggestive images throughout – a sleepless Prabha sitting in front of an open window reading Dr. Manoj’s poem by flashlight as one of Mumbai’s endless trains cuts through the background, for example, or the way the camera communicates tangible warmth and intimacy during a sex scene that’s as earnest a portrait of love as one can imagine. Humming beneath all this succulent sensualism is intense irony: How dense populations produce a feeling of disconnect (especially among people like our protagonists, all of whom moved from small towns to the big city), how engineering two people to marry can isolate each participant, how women in this society are essentially invisible despite their role as integral caretakers (Parvathy has to produce paperwork to prove she deserves to exist in a space where she’s lived for decades). 

I have to discuss the final act of the film, at least in vague terms, because it’s unforgettable. Kapadia’s languorous pace may test the patience of viewers seeking a “plot,” but after seeing the film, clearly her intent is to build to the Ratnagiri sequences, which waver in and out of dreamlike states as Prabha’s hope washes up on the shore so she may resuscitate it. The drama is strange and enthralling, and concludes with a final shot that holds and holds and holds and holds and holds on a potent portrait of joy and pain and longing that you won’t soon forget.

Our Call: All We Imagine as Light is a quiet stunner. STREAM IT and tell everyone you know to do the same.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.