Review of All We Imagine As Light / പ്രഭയായ് നിനച്ചതെല്ലാം, directed by Payal Kapadia

If you’re new here and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I began this website as a way to document everything I was watching and reading as a bit of a digital archive. I used to work professionally as a film critic for three years, so this was a way of also exploring my interests.

Lately I’ve had a lot of time to dedicate to the blog, as I fell into an unexpected era of unemployment. What a great time to fall into this period (I say this somewhat sarcastically), as the fields I was looking to go into have frozen hiring, or simply don’t have the budget to bring on another person.

That said, I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my blog and catching up on my movie and television backlog. I am forever grateful to have the finances to sit down and do this for a little bit, before job hunting, and that I can make a little bit of money off of the advertisements you see floating in the corner of my site.

But before this unexpected moment in my life was thrust upon me, I was working hard and even went to Korea for two months on an intensive program. That meant I did not have time to watch most of the big 2024 film releases, and once I quit my critic job in April 2024, I no longer had access to screeners anymore.

All We Imagine As Light was one of those movies I really wanted to see, but as I moved back to suburbia and no longer had a car, and no theater around me was showing it, I had no opportunities to see it. I watched how people raved about the movie online and was so jealous, yet I never thought to try and find it online.

As soon as the film was released for renting on online video platforms, I rented it immediately and watched the film on one cold Saturday. We had no plans to go out because there was freezing rain outside, so I gathered all of my comfiest blankets to sit down and watch this.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much, especially as I know the context isn’t what y’all are here for at the end of the day.

Two women, working as nurses at a hospital in Mumbai, grapple with their personal and environmental issues.

This is a movie that clocks in at a little under two hours, but man does it fly by quickly. When it ended, I was surprised that it was over so soon, and then I checked the clock nearby and realized it had been almost two hours.

All We Imagine As Light takes place in the city of Mumbai, one of the most densely populated cities in India, and focuses on the lives and daily routines of two nurses who live together: Anu and Prabha. Prabha is older than Anu, and she is the more serious of the two. Considering how her husband went to work in a factory in Germany and hasn’t contacted her in a year, it makes sense why she is the way she is.

In contrast, Anu is a junior nurse at the hospital they work at, and rumors are floating around the other nurses that she is seeing a Muslim man. We see their text conversations pop up on the screen throughout the course of the movie, and then we actually get to see them together when they meet up.

Their relationship is somewhat serious, as Anu considers buying a hijab and the proper attire for a Muslim wedding (which she does end up buying, but on the way he tells her it’s cancelled because of the weather). Prabha worries about the implications this might have on Anu, especially considering the ongoing Muslim-Hindu divide happening in India.

One night the two of them get a package at the apartment, which contains a rice cooker from Germany. It might be from Prabha’s husband, but she isn’t too thrilled outwardly at the prospect of having received something from him. It also doesn’t help that a contracted doctor at the hospital is trying to court her, but she keeps telling him she’s married.

At the same time, she’s helping out a fellow nurse named Parvaty. Parvaty is trying to fight against her landlord and building owner, as they want to knock down the place where many people are currently living and replace it with skyscrapers. Gentrification is happening right before our eyes, but Parvaty’s case is a tricky one, and it seems like she might not have a lot of rights as a tenant.

The final third of the movie takes place in Parvaty’s village on the coast. She makes the executive decision to quit the nursing job and go back home, and Prabha and Anu go with her to help out for a bit. Prabha, while outside one day, spots Anu and the Muslim boy, Shiaz, kissing. We also see them having sex on the beach at one point.

Prabha says nothing for now, then encounters a crowd on the beach surrounding an unconscious man. He’s drowning, and she uses her nursing experience to give CPR and it works. Later on, as she talks to him, she imagines he is her husband and she tells him that she does not want to see him ever again.

That same night, while sitting with Parvaty, she asks Anu to bring Shiaz over to them. The movie ends with the four of them sitting around a table, chatting about life and how weird it can be.

Overall Thoughts

Back when I worked as a film critic, I was invited as press to the Asian American International Film Festival, where I watched Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing. That was my first glimpse into the worlds and poetry she could create as a filmmaker, and I was just as impressed with All We Imagine As Light.

This film is absolutely gorgeous. The way the cameras linger and pause on shots of Mumbai and the coastal village, as well as the quiet silences that tell us so much about the characters and what they’re living through—they’re all brilliant and well calculated. There’s a lot of heart in the technical elements of this movie, which is why it’s such a treat to watch on-screen.

I am also admiring how unafraid Kapadia is. She isn’t on the best terms with the Indian government because of how she isn’t afraid to call out perceived injustices, which is why this film probably wasn’t the Indian Oscar nominee for Best International Feature Film. A Night of Knowing Nothing could have—and probably did—get her in trouble with the state because it’s a critique of a BJP appointed figure at a prominent film school Kapadia attended.

All of this is to say is that if you have a chance to watch this film, take it. It is one of my favorite releases of 2024 so far, and I think that it might be a movie that sticks with me for a long time.

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