2024 Top Ten List #3 All We Imagine as Light (Prabhayay Ninachathellam)

 

Writer/director Payal Kapadia

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Prabhayay Ninachathellam)           A                                      India  France  Netherlands  Luxembourg  Italy  USA  Belgium  (118 mi)  2024  d: Payal Kapadia 

Some people call this the city of dreams, but I don’t.  I think it’s the city of illusions.  You have to believe the illusion, or else you will go mad.                                                                             —part of the chorus of voices that opens the film

The first Indian film to premiere in competition at Cannes since Shaji N. Karun’s SWAHAM (1994) exactly 30 years ago, and the first Indian film by a female filmmaker to ever play at Cannes, winning the Grand Prix (2nd Place), the only Indian filmmaker to do so, though it really should have won the Palme d’Or over Sean Baker’s overwrought Anora, but apparently Jury President Greta Gerwig held sway with her American preference.  Building on her searing docufiction essay on militant youth, A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING (2021), which denounced the takeover of universities by Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government and was not distributed in India, unlike this film which has received congratulations from the highest levels of government (Cannes 2024: "India Is Proud Of You" PM Modi ...), this is a profoundly meditative, deeply compassionate almost spiritual evocation of the human condition at large, set in the pouring rain of contemporary Mumbai, centering on three female Hindu employees who work at the same hospital, each coming from small towns in southern India, as we follow their everyday lives and the bonds they share with each other.  The thought-provoking title, curiously enough, is borrowed from an expansive 11-panel painting (All We Imagine as Light (2017)) of the director’s mother, Nalini Malani, a well known painter and mixed-media artist in India, so the artistic lineage is passed down.  That title resonates throughout the film, like a Haiku poem, as the light, the lives, and the textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai are explored and celebrated in this eloquently lyrical and poetic film.  Kapadia spoke to nearly 200 people over the course of two years, asking them about a migrant’s experience of being in Mumbai for the first time, adding an extremely tender and humanistic perspective on a story that deals with the hardships women face in their daily lives where an established male patriarchy is overwhelmingly present, as women remain invisible in India, with Kapadia paying attention to the lives of those that contemporary India has conveniently forgotten, offering a nuanced take on how internalized patriarchy can also affect female friendships, given a novelistic scope, using characters as a mirror of society.  Among the most acclaimed films of the year, it would have been among the favorites to win the Best International Film at the Oscars, but the film was not nominated by India, choosing instead Kiran Rao’s more conventional LAAPATAA LADIES (2024), the kind of film the Indian government wants to promote, backed by some of the wealthiest men in the country.  As a director who is viewed as persona non grata in the Indian movie industry, literally shunned by the establishment, forced to make films on the margins, Kapadia has succeeded despite them, though in order to do so she has had to seek foreign funding, with Ravi Kottarakara, president of the Film Federation of India, explaining that the selection committee felt “that they were watching a European film taking place in India, not an Indian film taking place in India.”  While it is true that films co-produced in Europe often demand post-production in Europe, including European editors and film crews, which this film has, where the French editing does, in fact, shape the arthouse aesthetics, though the director spent two months working on the editing herself, yet there’s no mistaking this is a highly sensory and sensual film, where the many shades of light become a portal into this beguiling universe of what is, essentially, an independent film.  This is apparently more of an Asian problem in general, having a difficult time getting films produced in their own countries, especially for women in male-dominated industries, though the myopic view from an all-male selection committee may have had other motives as well.  Kapadia is a director who's been outspoken against injustices in her country and was among 35 students arrested during a 2015 midnight raid on the 68th day of a 139-day long campus protest against the government’s appointment of actor-turned-politician Gajendra Chauhan for the new chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India.  Kapadia was subsequently stripped of her scholarship and the chance to participate in a foreign exchange program, while the criminal case against her, and against several dozen fellow students, remains open nine years later and is scheduled for trial next summer.

A Malayalam-Hindi feature, this surprisingly intimate, meticulously constructed City symphony film opens with a series of voices, not from any of the main characters but from ordinary people on the streets, speaking openly about the everyday struggle of finding stability in the city, which recalls “There are eight million stories in the naked city” from Jules Dassin’s The Naked City (1948).  “The city takes time away from you,” we hear from one, while another laments that he’s lived in the same spot for over 20 years, but can’t bring himself to call it home, claiming “You’d better get used to impermanence.”  Mumbai is a city that bustles by day and glimmers by night, yet the opening sequence presents a market at closing time in a wide tracking shot during the monsoon season, beautifully shot by Ranabir Das in a cinéma vérité style, reminiscent of Chantal Ackerman’s D'Est (1993), capturing the essence of the city with its vibrant colors and incessant energy, filled with street vendors, car horns, crowded trains, narrow alleys, high-rise buildings, the rush of crowds, a tropical level heat, and clashing dialects, where the city distinguishes itself as an important character.  People have come from remote villages in India to try to make a living, with Kapadia capturing the random dynamics of everyday life in a patchwork of transitory spaces, small destinies carving out their own paths amidst a larger need for connection while finding a purpose in their lives, where the idea of home is complex.  A penetrating exploration of the lives of three working-class women and the transformative power of friendship, including Prabha (Kani Kusruti) who is initially seen in slow motion on a local train, like one of the unseen voices suddenly coming to life.  She is a quietly reserved, yet heavily trusted head nurse, married to a man she barely knows through a family-arrangement (a common story of countless Malayali women), an absent husband who left immediately after the marriage to work in Germany, having lost contact with him some time ago, where her life is left in limbo, now totally revolving around work, while her younger more carefree roommate Anu (Divya Prabha) is a free-spirited, new generation colleague who spends her days stuck on her phone secretly exchanging text messages with her Muslim boyfriend Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), someone her family (and fellow nurses) wouldn’t approve of, meeting him clandestinely, always trying to find out-of-the-way places to spend time alone.  When her family notifies her of their intentions to arrange her marriage, making it impossible to choose her own husband, she doubles down on her necessity for “real” love.  The older Parvati (Chhaya Kadam) works as a cook at the hospital, whose late husband handled all their assets and documents, without which she finds herself on the verge of being evicted from her modest home of 20 years, thanks to ruthless developers seeking to demolish the building in order to construct new high-rise buildings for Mumbai’s wealthy elite.  Economic progress is built upon the displacement and disenfranchisement of thousands of underprivileged and routinely exploited undocumented migrant workers, where a conspicuous sign outside reads “Class is a privilege reserved for the privileged.”  Recognizing only the husband as the sole owner, they refuse to acknowledge her or offer any compensation, where she sadly confesses, “Without papers, you could vanish into thin air.”  Prabha pushes away the affections of a doctor who’s clearly drawn to her, Doctor Manoj (Azees Nedumangad), often taking her aside, even writing her poems and baking sweets (unniappams), hoping to break through her wall of reserve, but her reluctance to reciprocate his feelings leaves her anxious and alone.  As they navigate the challenges of urban life, we see a mix of their personal desires and the societal constraints, reflective of three different generations, all while using the city’s teeming energy as a backdrop to illuminate their inner struggles and fleeting moments of connection, beautifully capturing the nuanced complexities of female friendship, offering a very profound statement on the value of women, who are otherwise completely overlooked and devalued in this society.   

With a terrific musical soundtrack by Topshe, whose real name is Dhritiman Das (the cinematographer’s brother), also the name of a fictional literary character in Satyajit Ray’s famous Feluda series, the score sounds very much like Brian Eno in its emotional transcendence, while also including brief impressionistic excerpts from Ethiopian pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s The Homeless Wanderer - YouTube (7:07).  Prabha may be viewed as the lead protagonist (the name literally means “light,” Prabha Name Meaning, Origin & more), extremely dignified and ever helpful to others, an essential component of her job, going through an intense inner struggle, where it’s also clear she keeps her emotions completely bottled up, which comes in conflict with the more aggressively flirtatious Anu, the source of hospital gossip, reminding her of the price she could pay for her brazen actions.  Very few, if any Indian films show any traces of nudity (which will be cut in India), yet there’s a moment following an argument when Anu angrily yet purposefully bares her breasts while changing out of her wet clothes before her roommate Prabha, creating an intentional moment of discomfort with an assertive act of liberation, which in itself is a very bold statement. Conversely, when Anu has sex with her naked boyfriend, she keeps her clothes on, suggesting she’s an empowered woman fully capable of making her own choices in deciding what’s best for her in any given moment, where her impulsive spontaneity is always a pleasant surprise.  Relationships aren’t presented in dramatic or sentimental terms, but in these small gestures and shared silences.  Despite the crowded chaos of the nocturnal city, where lives are compressed within small spaces, accentuating the effects of transientness and alienation, there’s a beautiful moment when the nurses rush to the rooftop to pull the sheets hanging out to dry from the torrential monsoon rains, like a scene out of Angelopoulos’ ETERNITY AND A DAY (1998), while Kapadia also lingers on quiet, overlooked details, capturing the lights in a market or the peaceful early mornings, hinting at smaller, gentler moments.  Parvati finally gives up on her ongoing battle against eviction and with the help of her friends decides to move back to her coastal hometown, which completely alters the rhythm of the film, finally slowing down, increasingly growing more quietly introspective, capturing the tranquility and natural beauty of the sea and the surrounding world, reminiscent of Hirokazu Kore-eda's Maborosi (Maboroshi no hikari) (1995) in the delicate scenes by the sea.  Not only is this an opportunity to explore various facets of femininity and the hardships they face throughout their lives, but leaving behind Mumbai feels like an important journey where they will find some form of autonomy, where the mystical forest meeting the sea becomes a space for their unfulfilled dreams to manifest.  While there’s no trace of melodrama, or any hint of stereotype, sometimes the artifice of film can help accentuate hidden truths that might otherwise remain hidden and never be seen, yet this film exposes so many layers of untold stories, where soulful connections are deep, yet for the most part remain unspoken.  With its focus on the subjective and emotional experience of the protagonists, where we sense something magical happening, allowing viewers to discover what is essential at any particular moment, for the director to show a sexually explicit relationship between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man in today’s India, under nationalist policies pushed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with a very significant increase in religious and political tensions (India's 'love jihad' laws: Another attempt to subjugate Muslims), makes this story as brave as it is beautiful.  India continues to be a place where women are punished for exercising their liberty.  These performances are genuine, feeling almost like a documentary, buttressed by the poetry of words and establishment shots that define where we are, where despite being far away, we feel as close as ever, offering clues to the transcendent power of cinema.  A tender, beautifully written and elegiac piece of work that has a seductive flow to it, with a slowly developing, hypnotic finale that feels right out of Wong Kar-wai’s CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994), this understated film revels in human complexity and need, accentuating the fragility of existence, reminding us that grace can find its way through any darkness, with light becoming an apt metaphor for resilience and hope.

Life of Pi – 3D

LIFE OF PI – 3D         B-                   

USA  (127 mi)  2012  d:  Ang Lee

Much like Cloud Atlas (2012), this is another example of Hollywood excess, as these guys love to throw their money around, this time somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 million dollars, which is considered a bargain for a hi-tech, special effects film.  To give you an example of the unstable nature of the business, not the least of which is financial, initially the production team targeted director M. Night Shyamalan in 2003, who shares Indian roots with the film, but he chose another film, LADY IN THE WATER (2006), leading to the choice in 2005 of Alfonso Cuarón who also chose another project, CHILDREN OF MEN (2006), then later in 2005 the pick was Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who began writing and adapting the screenplay, and even started shooting in India before abandoning the project.  So Ang Lee, hired shortly afterwards, is actually the 4th director chosen to make this film.  In other major changes, Tobey Maguire was originally hired to play the reporter, but Ang Lee chose not to use a recognizable face and deleted all his scenes, reshooting with a different actor.  Such is the nature of show business.  The film is largely a child’s fantasy adventure tale written for the screen by David Magee, the screenwriter of FINDING NEVERLAND (2004), an overly dour look at J.M. Barrie, the writer of Peter Pan, this time adapting the 2001 Booker Prize-winning bestselling novel by Yann Martel, an interesting literary prize awarded for the best full-length work of fiction from the former British Commonwealth, in this case India.  Shot in 3D, and while many are raving about its use here, including Roger Ebert  Ang Lee: Of water and Pi - Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun-Times calling it “the best use of 3D I've ever seen,” there are really only a few scenes where the use is significant, with one being the opening credit sequence, which is a montage of various animals joyously frolicking in the lush foliage of an Indian zoo, which has a playful ease about it, and is certainly a nice way to introduce animals living in harmony with both people and the natural world around them.  A good hour goes by after that where the 3D use is sporadic and not altogether significant.   

Set in 3 different time periods, beginning in the present, Irrfan Khan as a middle-aged man named Pi relates a personal story to a visiting journalist, Rafe Spall, which becomes the novel the film is based upon, explaining not only where he got his name, but also how he came to have faith in God.  Except for the finale, and other brief moments, the story is told entirely in flashback, one period at 12 and another at 16.  The youngest addresses Pi’s family, as his father owns and operates a zoo, but more significantly explores his spiritual interest in pursuing Hinduism, Islam, and Catholicism, eventually becoming a Hindu Catholic, which may as well be part of the Bahai faith, as he tends to accept a universality of religions.  While this spiritual initiation is supposed to come full circle by the end of the film, that’s not really how it plays out, as instead this is seen almost exclusively as a fantasy adventure story, where the religious affiliation is negated by the existentialist aspect of the journey.  For those inclined to see proof of God in the storytelling, as Pi apparently does, this is certainly not forced upon the viewer, as the overall drama is adventure based. When the adventure is over, the story peters out.  Pi’s family decides to move to Canada, bringing with them all the zoo animals which they intend to sell, but they are shipwrecked en route and Pi is separated from his family, the only eventual human survivor of the accident.  Inexplicably, Pi escapes with a zebra, an oranguatang, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger on a rescue raft, but by the end of the journey, it’s only a young boy and a tiger that survive.  Along the way, they encounter many adventures, most of which includes addressing the overriding fear of one another, as Pi literally has to construct an alternate life raft tied to the main raft that separates him from co-existing with a near starving carnivore.  The mad and ferocious rush of the shipwrecking storm eventually subsides to a tranquil calm, where the monotony of living through days after days on end slows the pace to a crawl, and each to their separate corners, so to speak.  

Some of the film’s most beautiful and transcendent moments occur during this peaceful interim, where the ocean turns translucent turquoise and the mind’e eye sees the entire cosmos reflected within, not only giant whales and exotic fish glowing in the dark, but also the faces of his family, the planets and the galaxy, where at least for one spectacular moment, 3D perfectly captures a poetic recreation of Buddhist enlightenment, a realization of nirvana.  While this is a moment when starvation alters the perception of reality, blurring the realms of existence, these are easily the most abstractly unique and unforgettable images of the film.  But mostly this is a Biblical Job endurance test for both human and animal alike, perhaps one and the same, where by the time the near-death experience envelops them, they are both reduced to skin and bones, the beast inside finally tamed, the savage fierceness of each literally sapped out of them, where all that’s left is praying for a miracle.  Ang Lee has always been a visually complex filmmaker, known for having a unique, chameleon-like quality of artistic metamorphosis, as the diversity and range of his work is literally stunning, and while he may have been searching for a novel use of 3D as a new cinematic language (as they all claim), where the experience of the film is as transforming as the book, unfortunately, except for a few priceless moments, much of this experience is a bit of a slow slog, especially the over-emphasis on verbal narration that can grow endless, actually undermining any visual effect, growing most tedious when the overly frustrated and crazed character starts calling out God, acting defiantly as if he’s ready to die.  While he may have been the sole human survivor, much of this is due to his reckless behavior at the time of the shipwreck, as he was already separated from the others by stupidly roaming the outer shipdecks in the middle of a storm, lucky he wasn’t blown away or washed overboard.  Despite creating an impressive CGI tiger, the Hollywood glossed, computer generated, artificial look of the screen tends to monopolize the viewer experience after awhile, where the ocean bears no resemblance to an ocean, and where a lack of dramatic engagement defines this adventure story, as it’s the human element that never rises above the material, especially a weak finale that undercuts everything that happened before. 

India: Matri Bhumi

INDIA:  MATRI BHUMI                 A                       

Italy  France  (95 mi)  1959  d:  Roberto Rossellini

On arrival one feels euphoria. The first surprise is the crowds. One sees tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, forming an endless river which has nevertheless not destroyed the vestiges of the past that Moslems, Persians, and English colonisers built.

As the story goes, sometime after the film was shown at Cannes in 1959, none other than Henri Langlois, noted French film archivist, lent the sole copy of this film to another artist, a sculptor or a painter, where the film languished for decades, believed to be lost, until a surviving relative discovered the film and eventually returned it to the Cinémathèque Française, where they were able to partially restore a badly faded film which had already begun to decompose.  The resulting film remains badly faded, where especially the natural shots of lakes, rivers, forests, and sky formations of this highly personalized documentary on India are particularly washed out, leaving the viewer to only imagine what all of this must have looked like initially, as the visuals in this mostly rural setting look enticing.  An inevitable comparison might be made to Louis Malle’s epic 6-hour pictorial bonanza Phantom India (L'Inde fantôme) (1969), where Malle himself offers his own gentle narration to one of the most colorful and astonishingly beautiful films ever made.  Unfortunately, due to the bleached out colors of this film, this comparison is blatantly unfair, but for what it’s worth, Malle’s film is more non-judgmental and observational in tone, offering quiet, understated reflections, asking the viewer to become immersed in the journey, while Rossellini’s is laden with personality, opening with humor yet becoming utterly somber by the end with a blending of narrators who each offer unique views of their lives, becoming a unified voice molded into one, much like Terrence Malick’s narration of collective voices in THIN RED LINE (1998).  Rossellini can be a tough nut to swallow, as he's loved by the auteurists (Rosenbaum and Fred Camper), but can be philosophically oblique, bordering on pompous, occasionally veering towards the arcane by the end of his career.  His Italian realist films are easier to comprehend because of their more understandable social settings, but later in life he became spiritually challenged, as if time left him fewer opportunities to complete his relationship with the Eternal.  This film however, is highly accessible to people of all ages, as animals are as prominently featured as humans, which is one of the themes of reincarnation, that we are all one.   

Opening with the sprawling mass of humanity that greets visitors in the immensely populated city of Bombay (now Mumbai), India, Rossellini moves into the rural areas where we will find what he calls the “authentic” Indian people, which may not be translated correctly, though the translation was privately subtitled by Rossellini biographer and film scholar Tad Gallagher, but this was one of the few unintentionally discordant or contentious remarks heard in the film, as one wonders if urban dwellers are any less real or genuine, but perhaps a clue is to think of people unspoiled or changed from their ancestral heritage.  The narrator also concludes that due to the dozens of religious affiliations and tribal groups coexisting within the Indian culture, that it is a tolerant, as opposed to intolerant society.  Again, this strikes the viewer as being the idea of an enamored visiting tourist, as this thoroughly disregards the inherent social injustices of the outlawed yet firmly entrenched caste systems that date back thousands of years, creating sub-castes of people who are considered less than human, and overlooks as well India’s violent warring history with their neighbor Pakistan, which goes back to the late 40’s when each obtained their independence from Great Britain, making this, along with similar long standing disputes with China and Nepal, one of the largest land-boundary disputes in the world.  The result has been a huge military build up, increasing aggression and hostility on both sides,  suggesting a stubborn refusal to seek peaceful political solutions and reflects a glaring religious and cultural intolerance.  However, to be fair, in the late 50’s when this film was made, the disputes between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region had not yet escalated to the point of dueling nations taunting each other with nuclear threats, which reached its heights in the late 90’s.

This film however reflects the lives of ordinary people and has an affectionate charm in the first person narration, opening with an elephant handler, who works with several other man-guided elephants logging trees in the forest and hauling the wood on their tusks or carried behind on chains to a specific destination.  Initially one thinks of man’s exploitive use of these giant animals, but the narrator reminds us they only work 3 hours early each morning, as it gets too hot for them after that, requiring full-time care for the rest of the day from their handlers who must coddle them, pamper them, bath them, feed them, walk them, cajole them, then feed them again, which leaves them time for little else.  His love of the animal is translated to the viewer, as we see him splashing and scrubbing his animal in the river, where he has a thoroughly charming way of describing elephant behavior, including one besmitten elephant couple that needs their space.  This parallels his own human behavior when he spots an attractive young girl from a traveling puppet show that arrives in town, and he brings his elephant to feast on a tree behind her house where he can get a good look at her each day, that is until all vegetation from the tree has been eaten. The narrator’s gentle charm and easy going manner reflects a harmony with the natural world around him and with his newly discovered love.

The film then uproots us from this delightful elephant reverie and places us in the middle of a giant dam construction project where the new narrator, whose family unit resembles that of the last narrator, beams with pride just to be able to participate in such an enormous undertaking.  But it has a cost, as 190 men have lost their lives working on this project, a small amount when compared to the number of people who would die from flooding if the dam were not built, but there’s a pervasive feel of disconnection to modernity, best expressed by the immediate shift in music, wonderfully written throughout by Philippe Arthuys, which has transformed from the celebratory traditional village music in the opening segment to an eerie experimental sound design, much like the dissonant electronic music from Antonioni’s RED DESERT (1964), which accentuates man’s alienation to the world around him.  But while this narrator affirms his part in the building process, pick by pick, step by step, stone by stone, a human chain working in solidarity until the construction project is complete, the camera gazes at a funeral ceremony where the deceased is burned on a wooden pyre, or catches the couple in a humorous marital spat which is nearly Chaplinesque in its wordless body language and its intentional lack of translation, as his wife is furious at being displaced, as they will have to move to his next job assignment.  In contrast to the opening segment, this shows how modernization and human progress separates man from his natural world, leaving him more exposed to face the future alone.

We’re back in the jungle in the next segment, when an elderly man has already retired, whose manicured rice fields are farmed by his sons, allowing him solitary retreats into the jungle, the only place where he can contemplate his place in the order of things, where he understands the sounds that emanate from a pair of courting tigers nearby, but also the danger at living in such close proximity.  When the noise from tractors at construction projects nearby scare many of the animals out of the jungle, one of the tigers is wounded by a porcupine it is unnaturally forced to hunt, causing it to even attack humans,  as in desperation it can no longer stay away at a careful distance.  The villagers meet and decide that for their own protection the tiger must be killed, but the elderly man is revolted by the thought of killing any living creature, as under his spiritual belief of reincarnation, all creatures are descendants of one another and are all brothers, and rises early in the morning and attempts to smoke the tiger out of its familiar territory and force it to move further away where it will remain unharmed. 

The warm, playful humor that has been present in the narration throughout suddenly veers into a solemn tone, as dangerous heat levels can also take its toll on human lives.  A man with a cutely dressed monkey that he carries tied to a chain on his shoulder passes out and eventually succumbs to heat stroke in a walk through the countryside, leaving the monkey, still chained to the man, to fend for itself as the vultures swarm high above the body and gather ever closer.  This is simply stunning footage, as the helplessness of the monkey wordlessly escalates.  We later see it in town still carrying a long chain, without any explanation of how it escaped, but we do see how the monkey is ignored by nearly everyone except children who are fascinated that it continues to perform tricks even without its master.  The futility of its future becomes evident, even if not shown, as it is spurned by the wild monkeys for having a human smell, as the camera follows other monkeys jumping furiously through the trees, making spectacular leaps, something a monkey still carrying a chain around its neck could never do, suggesting that when the interconnecting bond between humans and animals is broken, death, the ultimate chain we carry around our necks, is inevitable.