all we imagine as light (w&d payal kapadia)

Having seen Kapadia’s first film recently, I came perhaps expecting to be mildly disappointed. How could a feature reproduce the off-the-cuff feel of a documentary? Would it have the same freshness, the same variable dynamic? The director appears to confront this concern from the opening shots of the city, with a Vox Pop voiceover. Those of us who do not know Mumbai are in uncharted territory, as are those of us who expect a script that will adhere to conventional beats. An obviedad, as they say in Spanish, but the film’s tone is always perched between silence and the noise. The noise of the city, the silence of the characters. Whose words sometimes appear almost as a voiceover, as they move like flaneurs through the metropolis. Their words are delicate things, lightly spoken, competing with the hubbub. In both films Kapadia shows herself to be a master of the use of sound, with the score by Topshe adding a constant non-intrusive presence. The acting, in part as a result, is always on point, sanded down, extracting emotion with the minimum of effort. This film is almost the anti-Titane, another emblematic female-directed movie. Where that film was strident, this one is featherlight, demanding attention, resisting dramatic beats. It makes for a viewing process that is constantly active, as opposed to reactive (reactive being the holy grail of commercial cinema - to get the audience hooked by the next dramatic twist, the next blow to the cerebral cortex). When Anu heads to visit her lover for an illicit night of passion, she is literally railroaded: flooding has stopped the trains. The night never happens. When something dramatic does happen, towards the end, it is never clear whether this is a real event or a figment of Prabha’s imagination. All We imagine as Light enraptures, it holds the viewer’s hand so gently the viewer barely notices it, and leads them down the by-ways of one of the world’s great cities, whose characters are as anonymous and significant as we are. 

Nb - The way this film’s conclusion echoes Kapadia’s first film is a sly, beautiful device.