A genuine tour de force that has nary a blemish
Payal Kapadia All we imagine as light It’s exactly what we imagined it would be – a deceptively simple, surprisingly tender, uncomfortable (despite its nearly two-hour runtime) and deeply human study of outsiders’ workaday struggles in a city that never sleeps, where rest is an elusive thing. . So, more than a dream, Mumbai immerses people in the illusion that it thrives on.
All we imagine as lightA tale of failed love, shattered aspirations, stolen moments of fulfillment and repressed longings, crafted with an unflinching eye for detail, expertly shot and edited, embellished with a concise, evocative score and bolstered by a clutch of impeccable performances. done
The film follows four ordinary citizens of Mumbai – three from Kerala, one from a village in Maharashtra that stands on the edge of the sea – who work quietly and relentlessly to express their aspirations and frustrations in a chaotic, noisy and difficult environment that perhaps leads to far more. . It gives.
Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) are nurses in a hospital in Mumbai. The two share a home. They perform an essential service but how indispensable are they as individuals to the city.
Prabha has not spoken to her absent husband for over a year. The person left India soon after the marriage and never came back. The phone calls have stopped but Pravara’s desire to reconnect remains.
A much younger Anu, whose parents are looking for a match for her in Kerala, is in love with a Muslim boy Shiaz (Ridhu Haroon), a fact she hides from Prava as she searches for places where she can be alone with the boy.
The two women are often seen making their way against speeding trains (one of their main vehicles) or through Mumbai’s monsoon rains (a defining seasonal feature of the city).
Drops of residential tower light visible from the windows of Prabha and Anu’s rooms are punctuated by equally pronounced swabs of darkness hanging around the nocturnal light of the cityscape.
The first time Prabha is seen on screen, she is on a moving train. When he stands at the door, he is seen hanging in mid-air. It reflects her state of mind – she is married but alone, caught up in the frenetic currents of Mumbai and still not in her glittering rhythm.
A rice cooker in a box addressed his lands at his doorstep It is an unwanted gift from her estranged husband. It triggers feelings that have been dormant.
Anu’s life has its share of brilliance, but his interfaith issue is a source of concern for both him and his lover. Their secret meeting – likely to be after Anu finishes her work at the hospital – is brief but intense.
Hospital employee Parvati (Chaya Kadam) is another important figure in the story of an uprooted soul looking for an anchor. Parvati’s house is threatened to be demolished. He has lived there for over two decades but has no documents to prove his ownership. A builder wants to evict him.
Parvati and Prabha throw stones at a hoarding announcing a new real estate project But they have nothing else to do. Parvati meets her fate. Prabha clings to the life she has built in a city that can never be hers even as she spares no effort to fit in.
A voice, off-camera, says that you have to believe the illusion that Mumbai gives. If you don’t, you might be crazy. Neither Prabha nor Anu wants to journey to that end which is never a step away. A gaping gap exists between what life has given them and what they expect from it. They must skirt around it at all costs.
If you don’t have papers, you don’t exist, Parvathy told Prabha over a farewell meal at a small Chinese restaurant that she passes every day on her way to work but never enters. You can disappear and no one will notice, she adds. Parvati’s personal plight resonates beyond her life.
An off-camera Gujarati woman who, in the opening moments of the film, informs us that she has been in the city for almost 23 years but still cannot call herself home. The feeling that she has to leave never goes away, she says.
Prabha and Anu accompany Parvati to her seaside village, where she has a house she can call her own. Nurses are greeted by the music of the waves, the expanse of sea and beach, and the serene, undisturbed blue of the sky.
With the hustle and bustle of the metropolis behind them, if only temporarily, two Malayali nurses discover spaces within the four walls of their modest home and inside and outside their workplace in Mumbai.
They speak in Malayalam – the film also has lines in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali – but Prabha, having lived in Mumbai much longer than her roommate, is comfortable in Hindi. Real connections are hard to make.
All we imagine as light Clever and inherently intuitive. It masterfully balances the emotive and the cerebral, with the deeply felt artistically intent and the acerbic and tenacious. The film’s strength lies as much in its original intelligence as in the empathy it displays for its characters.
Its objectives and the accuracy of its implementation are multifaceted by the main actors. Kani Kushruti is as mesmerizing as the film. Divya Prabha shines as the woman whose emotions collide with problems she cannot avoid.
And Chaya Kadam conveys with remarkable skill the resignation and wisdom of someone who has lived in the city for decades without finding a finger.
All we imagine as light It is a portrait of a city and the rhythm of life struggling to sustain itself in the face of constant, often unpleasant, unpredictability. It’s a real tour de force with no blemishes.
