All We Imagine as Light - Janus Contemporaries

We open on the city of Mumbai as a moving mass of people. There is no individuality from our viewpoint. Trains arrive and depart. Cars buzz around the streets. Then, we begin to hear voices of the people who make up the city. Everyone has a story to tell. We focus in and hone in on two voices, out of millions, and suddenly, like that, the scale of the film narrows down. It’s a personal story of two women out of millions. It, at once, makes the world feel both large and small. 

All We Imagine as Light is a masterful film, written and directed by Payal Kapadia, who sees the world in such a unique way. From those very opening moments, I was taken aback by how subtlety, how brilliantly, she manipulated purely filmic language in order to convey such a complicated message through a series of moving images. She seems to have a preternatural sense of visual storytelling, not unlike some other directorial savants. She displays an aptitude toward filmmaking on a scale of Spielberg or Scorsese. Her scale here is to show the importance of life both on an individual, intimate scale, and how much each story matters on a larger scale of interconnected existences.

The two stories at the center of All We Imagine as Light revolve around roommates who work at the same hospital together: Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha). Prabha is a little older, more professional and a bit more uptight. Anu is younger, not as disciplined, spends her paychecks too quickly and sometimes needs Prabha’s help to cover the rent. They get along together, but they do have arguments. Prabha is married, by arrangement, to a man who lives thousands of miles away, in Germany. Their relationship quickly fell apart, and he left. He used to call, but he hasn’t called her in over a year. Anu’s parents are sending her pictures of potential bachelors, but she’s already in love with someone else.

Roger Ebert once referred to films as a machine that generates empathy. Films like All We Imagine as Light allow someone from halfway around the world to step into the shoes of someone else and live a slice of their life, over the course of a few days. It’s hard to deny the magic of film and storytelling after experiencing something like All We Imagine as Light. The story doesn’t twist and turn, nor are there any extended action sequences, but it’s just as gripping as anything else, because it’s so very human in its execution.

I was very young when I fell in love with film. I grew up watching and loving movies because my mom worked at the local video store and I had unlimited access to whatever I wanted to see, but my deeper appreciation for the craft came later. I was in middle school, and PBS was doing a series on cinema in the 1970s. The first thing I remember seeing out of that series was Atlantic City, directed by Louis Malle. My dad had seen it before,e and he told me that Louis Malle moved at a different speed than American directors, that I’d have to readjust my expectations just a little bit. In a strange way, I had a similar sensation when watching All We Imagine as Light. It moves at a different speed, with a city at its center that feels alive, and if you can move along with it, you’re going to be whisked away by it.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
All We Imagine as Light arrives on a single-disc release, housed in a standard case with an attractive cover that captures both the warm and cool color palettes of the film. Inside the case in a short essay about the film written by Michael Joshua Rowin.

Perhaps one of the reasons All We Imagine as Light got me thinking about 1970s European-directed cinema is because of its cinematography. Though All We Imagine as Light was shot digitally, it emulates 16mm film brilliantly, complete with “film” grain—whether achieved in post or caught in-camera, I’m not sure. Even the coloring, which borders nearly on oversaturation, reminds me of the film stock they’d use for this kind of movie had it been made in the 1970s. Reds brilliantly pop among a sea of varied colors, and skin tones are warm and healthy. The focus is a bit soft, nearly dreamlike, but closeups are razor sharp with fine details visible, like lines on faces, or the stitching on clothing.

For a quiet, sensitive and intimate drama, All We Imagine as Light is very active in its DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround sound mix. Rear speaker activity is at a constant level—whether through the hustle and bustle of Mumbai (with traffic whooshing by, or a train screeching on its tracks), or through the buzz of insects in a small village that the story moves to. Though the musical score isn’t frequent, when it does play either a jazzy tune or an inspirational one at the end, it takes full advantage of the entirety of the soundstage and envelops the listener. Throughout all this, the mix never loses sight of the dialogue clarity, which is favored above all else.

Bummer. I know Janus/Criterion Contemporaries’ releases don’t tend to have many features, but I was so swept up by All We Imagine as Light that I was hoping (greedily, probably) that there would be more to see, maybe even an audio commentary. Oh, well. Maybe one day.

• Interview – Director Payal Kapadia

• Trailer

All We Imagine as Light is a Great Film. That’s right, “Great” with a capital “G”. It’s a reminder of the power of cinema, a narrative that is deceptively slight in its focus, that helps our collective understanding of humanity as a whole. The video presentation looks good, and the audio is excellent. While I wish there had been more supplemental features, I understand why there wasn’t. All We Imagine as Light, from Janus Contemporaries, is Highly Recommended.