Recently, a filmmaker friend told me how all those who loved Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s 2023 film Animal couldn’t disclose it for fear of judgement. Much like those who disliked Payal Kapadia’s widely acclaimed All We Imagine as Light. His remark felt surprisingly accurate, prompting a critical examination of Kapadia’s film.
Unlike mainstream movies that bombard viewers with extravagant visuals and high-decibel sounds, All We Imagine as Light tries to slowly engage the audience with its gentle narration. However, if one can set aside its delicate beauty and look at how the film documents Bahujan lives through its three women characters, the narrative seems superficial and even convenient.
Kapadia’s film makes extra effort to show that Mumbai is worse than what it truly is. The deliberate choice to shoot during the monsoon has resulted in wet, damp, and perennially gloomy frames. In real life, the evening local trains become less crowded post the Andheri and Borivali stations. But Kapadia portrays them – and the city – as unrelentingly claustrophobic.
Mumbai surely isn’t a perfect city. Crushing real estate spaces and long commuting hours are indeed significant challenges. But it still manages to draw migrants from across the country. And that isn’t just because of the economic opportunities it offers. The metropolis and its everyday crowded madness ironically make space for empathy and tolerance among the working classes. And that is what makes Mumbai endearing. It remains one of the most non-judgmental cities in the country; a city where individual freedom is a fairly accessible thing.
Importantly, Mumbai’s public places remain accessible to young couples. It isn’t an uncommon sight to witness couples at the Juhu beach, sitting close to each other and minding their own business. The rest of the beach crowd lets them be too, except for the occasional curious tourist. Even in peak monsoon, young lovers can be spotted sitting under umbrellas at Marine Drive. Though ineffective in that weather, these umbrellas show how Mumbai allows people to find love—from intimate moments at Marine Drive to long-distance romances between Byculla and Dahisar.
In All We Imagine as Light, people have no time or space for love. Even a carefully planned romantic rendezvous is spoiled by a wedding that gets cancelled. Kapadia makes it look like working-class individuals in Mumbai lack the creativity to find ways to be intimate with those they desire.
Manufacturing paradise
Mumbai’s portrayal in All We Imagine as Light becomes more questionable when Kapadia juxtaposes it with the port town of Ratnagiri. Ratnagiri is amusingly depicted as a place with large and open spaces, an extra supply of sunlight, and inhabitants who seem to be chilling 24/7.
The same couple whose romance was marred by Mumbai rains gets to make out in Ratnagiri’s dreamy open spaces. Something that unravels almost like a teen fantasy. The film fails to properly acknowledge the risks that such acts bring with them in smaller towns. Caste-based and patriarchal norms are supremely stringent there, making it difficult for even original inhabitants to find love.
To see a couple from Mumbai further their romance in a place like Ratnagiri, thus, seems shockingly ignorant. The woman, if spotted by residents, could easily be labelled a ‘sex worker’ while the couple could be tied up, stripped, or beaten. Add to this the fact that the legislative and parliamentary constituencies of Ratnagiri have been won by either the Shiv Sena or the Bharatiya Janata Party in recent times. Kapadia forcibly imagines freedom and romance in such a conservative setting, ignoring the harsh social realities of India’s small towns.
Any young working-class couple would be more than glad to negotiate with Mumbai’s rain to work out their intimate operation. Kapadia labels Mumbai a city of illusion, only to create her own fantasy land in Ratnagiri.
Also read: ‘A female director doesn’t mean no male gaze’—Kani Kusruti is so much more than All We Imagine
An unimaginative working-class
The film’s women characters are constantly sulking and depressed. Almost as if they derive some twisted pleasure from it. This is particularly true for Prabha, the protagonist played by Kani Kusruti. It’s easy to gauge why her job as a nurse offers her satisfaction, but a bit hard to understand why she’s so clinically challenged in romance.
If she truly misses her husband, who works in Germany, why doesn’t she aggressively try to connect with him? Or if she doesn’t care for him at all, why doesn’t she accept or reciprocate the attention of other men in her life? Her character almost borders on masochism. The most she does is passionately touch and hug the cooker sent by her husband.
Anu, played by Divya Prabha, was a considerably relatable character. But she, too, seems to be working part-time in the sulking department. Chhaya Kadam’s character Parvaty comes with some spunk but easily gives up when her house is forcibly taken over by high-rise builders.
And if this wasn’t enough, we see one of them urinate in the open, depriving the character of whatever dignity it had left.
The Bahujan women in All We Imagine as Light appear incapable of both joy and assertion–choosing to withdraw rather than fight for what they want. Contrast this with Pa Ranjith’s Kaala (2018), which documents the lives of Tamil migrant workers in Dharavi. Like Kapadia’s film, Kaala, starring Rajinikanth in the titular role, explores the contrast between high-rise buildings and the displacement of migrant workers from their modest homes. Much like Kapadia’s film, a woman character in Kaala also complains about not having enough space to romance her husband.
But even within its ‘commercial masala’ mould, Kaala documents Bahujan lives with more vibrance and vigour. The characters in it come across as alive beings capable of love, protesting aggressively when their rights are repressed. It is ironic to observe that a mainstream star vehicle has done more justice in documenting Bahujan lives than an independent film of international acclaim.
Also read: Laapataa Ladies is gentle feminism but a strong reply to films like Animal
All we imagine as laapataa
There was considerable debate about sending Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies as India’s Oscar entry over All We Imagine as Light. Except, rather interestingly, they are both very similar.
For starters, both films build their narrative around sisterhood across class, caste and age divide. In Kiran Rao’s movie, the diversity among the women characters – one from a feudal family, another from a Bahujan background, and an elderly Dalit woman – is more clearly spelt out. However, it remains more subtle in Kapadia’s film.
Next, if Rao’s film focuses on women’s freedom with respect to marriage and education, Kapadia’s examines freedom in the context of romance and the workplace. What is uncannily similar in both is Chhaya Kadam’s role. She plays the same spunky and independent character in both films. She claims to have kicked out her son in one film, and refuses to bother him in the other. In Laapataa Ladies, there’s a picture of Dr BR Ambedkar in her house. And in All We Imagine As Light, there are images of Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule at a protest meeting she attends. One might wonder if the actor is the default choice for playing bold Dalit characters in films centred around class and caste-defying sisterhood.
There is even a quick and deliberate commentary on the concept of ‘burkha/ghoonghat’ in both films – though with differences in tone and style. Overall, while Rao’s film is funny and upbeat, Kapadia’s is slow and melancholic.
More importantly, both films reveal problems with the way sisterhood-based movies are being made in the country. More often than not, filmmakers try to force-fit friendships across class, caste and age barriers, treating the sisterhood theme like a selling formula. Such portrayals don’t seem organic and come across as political punchlines.
In real life, female friendships are often determined by the caste-class group one belongs to. But in these films, the bonding seems to primarily emerge out of comparable husband/boyfriend problems. Similar to temporary friendships that emerge at workplaces based on mutual hatred for the same boss. Except, in the absence of that boss, the friendships wither away soon.
While it is crucial to appreciate Kapadia’s effort to make a film documenting Bahujan women’s lives, it seems equally valid to point out the glaring issues with it. In some way, Kapadia still seems to be reeling under the effect of campus politics. Being in an elite educational institution allows a person to be infinitely liberal and rebellious – even when their understanding of society’s vast complexities is limited.
Rajesh Rajamani is a filmmaker and film critic based out of Chennai. His X handle is @rajamanirajesh. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
A poorly written critique coming from a place of extreme bias. The whole concept of the movie was how people come to Mumbai and live there for decades and still feel a sense of not belonging there while also feeling a sense of loss when they leave the city. It was shown by using the tools of cramped up space in Mumbai, a young love trying to find its place amongst the crowd, a class bias that pervades the city, and a town a few kms from Mumbai where the last finds her home. Ratnagiri was not shown to be free from problems- one very astutely shown was that of a man who probably would have died with no medical care had it not been for the presence of a nurse there that very moment.
The author is a moron…and pbly a modi & bjp bhakt or suck-up. The quality of life in mumbai is horrible even for upper middle class, despite higher salaries… forget abt lower middle class and the poor. We all know that.
We have many substandard film critics in our country, and i am afraid Rajesh is one of them. He has completely misjudged ‘all we imagine as light’ and narrate it as Mumbai vs. Ratnagiri. It’s about swimming against the tide. Come what may, when all of us are bound or rather forced to live in metro cities despite all odds and sometimes even in rather unhealthy, unhygeinic condition of our ancestral roots, these three ladies decided to get back to wilderness, get back to rural setting, getting back to beloved one at the exchange of economic gain, and embrace economic impoverishment and uncertainty. It’s a film about going against the current tide of market economics. Mumbai here is used as metaphore of exploitative system operates all over the world in the name of urbanization.
I cannot believe you have reviewed the movie with a lens of such prejudice that you even made ‘nature’ a cause of error in the directors opinion to keep a script. I mean like hats off to you dude. Do you think people can have sex in open places in Mumbai? Please do that and send me proof that you have done it – and let me know how comfortable it it. Living in a cosy appartment yourself, you are actually throwing tantrums about a movie that shows the harsh reality that you you dont want it to go out, even if it isnt your dirty laundry, just because you want to blame the director for being fool-hardy with her direction? What sort of a journalist are you? Learn to keep these opinions of yours in your pants please. No one can and will relate to it.
A highly prejudiced and superficial evaluation of a movie 👎
I can’t help but wonder craftly how you have weaved the director’s elite ‘institute’ to review a piece of work. So eager to bracket her as a ‘liberal’ who is not in touch with the ground reality.
So quick to form an opinion on the person and not the film, so happy to put people in boxes. J
Journalism really has seen such a shift since the advent of social media. Everyone with an opinion has found a platform to express.
Good times indeed 🙂
You dont live in my hometown , so don’t speak for it . Keep your biases to you
What a Non sensical thing to insinuate that “BJP/SS won the seat, so it’s conservative as hell” and “People would be even beaten up by residents for PDA”…
As a Maharashtrian resident, And frequent visitor of Ratnagiri…I have seen Girls wearing ‘Hot Pants’ to even remote temples and no one takes any “Objection”…
Opinion label doesn’t mean free pass to irrationality or absurdity…
So, election win by an AIMIM or I.N.D.I.A. (or any non- BJP/ Shiv Sena) candidate from Ratnagiri seat would have rendered it more liberal. Kudos to u. Hope u have much more creativity in store.
U must be aware both BJP & Shiv Sena don’t exist thr in ur dear pak/bangladesh, but still taslima has preferred BJP-lead india for assylum.
BTW what business do the election outcome has in a film’s review..? Ahh..yes it’s meant to be published in ‘The’ Print.
It’s a film by the woke, of the woke and for the woke. No wonder it’s winning awards at all film festivals across the world. Pretty much all film festivals are controlled by the Left-liberal woke crowd and they invariably select films which are representative of their idiotic ideology.
I watched the film and was thoroughly unimpressed. A very average film which is riding on the accolades showered by the woke brigade.