All We Imagine As Light,  Magical Merger  Of  Workaday Reality & Surrealism

If you can get  across one major challenge  in the plot towards  the  end  of the film, then Payal Kapadia’s sensually vibrant rigorously uncontaminated   view of Mumbai’s dispassionate dingy workingclass  nightlife is easy to embrace as  something truly special.

A film about  commuting  characters in  Mumbai which doesn’t flatter to deceive.  Kapadia’s cameraman Ranabir Das takes in all the stench  and the  endless  chaos  with a sighing , reverent, arching view .

The ‘lens’ said, the better.

The actors don’t speak like  actors. They talk. They don’t  spew lines.They say whatever they have to say, and not what we would  like to hear.

Prabha(Kani Kusruti)  and  Anu(Divya Prabha)  are nurses in  a low-maintenance  hospital who are also roommates. Their life is  no bed of roses for sure. The smell all around  them assails us. Not that they are asking us to be a part of their lives.Still,there is no escaping the stench of a  dying city,filling the empty spaces  in the population’s heart with  false promises and lots  of noises.

Oh, the  din of the raat  never ends!K A Abbas  had once swooped into  it  in  a film titled Bambai  Raat Ki Baahon Mein. Payal Kapadia leans  into Mumbai’s chaos with a rigour and  enthusiasm  that seem more  a necessity than  a desire.

 At the prologue we  are  taken through a sweeping view of migrants  in Mumbai , talking about themselves. One of them , from Bihar, speaks in Maithili.Another tells us that he fled from his home because of the stench…

The sense  of moving from one  chaos to another is  preserved in Kapadia’s intriguing narration ,like something unpleasant but precious.We move from Prabha’s dark despondent world(she has been abandoned by  an absentee husband)  to  Anu’s not-so-darkened existence: Anu has  a life .a  caring horny boyfriend Shiaz(Hridhu Haroon) .Anu is a creature of the night .She grabs  all the experiences  that life has for her.

Both the ladies move  to  a coastal village with Parvati(Chaya Kadam) who is the third cog in the wheel of misfortune.

Here is  where the “problematic”  experience happens to  Prabha.She rescues  a stranger(Anand Sami) from drowning and then has an imaginary  conversation with him where he is the absconding husband come to  heel.

This is the only time  we see Prabha  happy .We are inclined to let her be with her fantasy. She has earned it.

  All We  Imagine As Light  is  an experience   that leaves us  with mixed feelings. Its original fecund language of expression is incontestably exciting. But it can also be exasperating  at times for the very same reason that it is  exciting. The actors  are  all so oblivious of  the camera, the film seems  not to be aspiring to anything principally cinematic.

And yet there Topshe’s  background  music  challenging us  to not leave our seats. The sound is so sophisticated, so at odds with the characters and milieu. And yet we are not complaining. All We Imagine  As Light doesn’t give us  an opportunity to  challenge its storytelling vagaries. It is that  kind of a film.