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.

2022 Top Ten List #7 What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?

 

Director Aleksandre Koberidze

Koberidze with New York Film Festival moderator Dennis Lim

Koberidze with cinematographer Faraz Fesharaki (in cap)

Actor Giorgi Bochorishvili shooting in Kutaisi

cinematographer Faraz Fesharaki

WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SKY? (Ras vkhedavt, rodesac cas vukurebt?)      A-         Georgia  Germany  (150 mi)  2021  d: Aleksandre Koberidze

“These morons have never seen a raven,” Guia A. thought, “but you couldn’t notice anything on his face.”                 —Rezo Cheishvili, Georgian writer from Kutaisi

Set in a timeless, technology-free present, this is the kind of movie that needs to be seen in theaters, yet most, unfortunately, will probably view this virtually.  Shot before the pandemic, yet released during the Covid outbreak, it has a strange and fascinating way of holding our attention during the unusually long run time, as it’s largely a visual and aural tone poem, a love letter to the town of Kutaisi, emerging from the Caucasian foothills, highlighted by the briskly flowing Rioni River, with close-ups on faces and the backs of heads, children and adults alike, always displaying a playful air, often deleting the dialogue entirely, suggesting a Georgian filmmaker adding the cinematic poetry of Terrence Malick to his repertoire, where the music often tells the story over long, silent passages.  Written, directed, edited, and narrated by Koberidze, who studied at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin, he works in collaboration with his cinematographer, Faraz Fesharaki, shot with a mix of 16mm and digital, creating a fairy tale about two young lovers who meet by chance in the opening of the film, agreeing to meet the next day for a date, but both are magically transformed into older versions of themselves, looking like other people, losing the essence of who they are in the process, only remembering the date.  Neither have the capacity to recognize the other, so life goes on in an aimless and drifting kind of way, with a wandering camera capturing the nuances of this ancient city, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, going back to the 6th century BC and the ancient Kingdom of Colchis (THE GOLDEN KINGDOM OF COLCHIS - Atinati), with its narrow, winding streets, yet the stunning locations serve as launching points for a series of photogenic wonders, accentuating the town’s bridges and parks, a truly spectacular river that continually holds our fascination, exuberant kids on the street playing soccer, plentiful dogs roaming about, and several outdoor café’s.  The voice of a narrator guides us through, sounding much like Geoffrey Holder as the narrator in Tim Burton’s CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005), as there’s a snarky sarcasm that suggests an all-knowing omniscient eye, as if telling a bedtime story, with magical realism sprinkled about like fairy dust.  Musical composer Giorgi Koberidze, the director’s brother, utilizes Georgian traditional music to wondrous effects, with young girls spontaneously breaking out into song at an outdoor café (on the night of the date), or often providing a haunting background to utterly sublime images onscreen.  While ostensibly a love story, the length and constantly roaming camera finding random subjects of interest suggests this is more of a time capsule tribute to the Georgian city of Kutaisi and the continuation of the Georgian culture in general.  The Soviet Georgian Republic declared its independence in 1991, but with the recent Russian attacks on the Ukraine, there are rumblings about a similar occurrence in Georgia, as Russia was loathe to grant its independence and always viewed it as an extension of Russia.  These ominous implications are mentioned briefly by the narrator, “a time of atrocities and crimes,” never explicitly detailing the specifics of the reference, but we hear thunder on the mountains, which also sound like exploding artillery shells, where the serenity of this harmonious setting could be erupted at any moment, turning all of this into a fading memory.   

Opening in a Bressonian moment, as he obsessively captured the feet of characters, with the camera only finding their feet, as Lisa (Oliko Barbakadze), a pharmacist, accidentally drops a book that Giorgi (Giorgi Bochorishvili), a soccer enthusiast, graciously picks up, both openly exchanging pleasantries, before they go along their way, but they accidentally meet in the exact same place again, with Lisa confessing “Coincidence is reliable,” finally deciding to meet intentionally the next day, setting a date.  But the curse of the Evil Eye intrudes, changing their fortunes, promising they would not be the same when they woke up the next day, and despite taking precautions, this proves to be true.  Lisa (Ani Karseladze) and Georgi (Giorgi Bochorishvili) no longer recognize themselves, continually staring at themselves in mirrors, finding it impossible to believe.  But Lisa loses all memory of her medical background, while Georgi loses all athleticism for soccer, both finding themselves in a strange no man’s land.  Remembering the date, however, both show up, sitting at different locations, completely unrecognizable to one another, staring blankly off into the night underneath the dark foliage of tall trees, but each thinks the other has been diverted for unexplained reasons.  Both independently take a job from the same bar owner (Vakhtang Fanchulidze) at the same café where they were supposed to meet, with Lisa learning to sell ice cream, while hoping to eventually run into Georgi, who improbably works nearby operating a horizontal bar on a nearby bridge, offering prize money to anyone who can deadhang for two minutes (we never see anyone successfully do it).  Prominently figuring into the film is the prevalence of the upcoming World Cup, including the use of the song Notti Magiche, GIANNA NANNINI & E. BENNATO: ⊱ Un' estate Italiana YouTube (4:27), an anthem for the 1990 World Cup, playing through the duration of an exquisitely sequenced, slow-motion montage of kids playing soccer, yet here Argentinean soccer star Lionel Messi is the anointed hero, with bars and café’s looking to capitalize by installing a projector and screen on the premises to attract avid soccer fans, yet just as quickly the narrator makes an abrupt turn, describing our era as the age of atrocity, an era when forest fires fueled by human greed killed 1.25 billion animals, and then just as quickly gets back to the developing story.  The simplicity of the story allows the filmmaker to immerse viewers in the sights and sounds of the city, becoming an abstract mosaic of the inhabitants, where perspectives are unique, with plenty of digressions, even including a substory on the spoken intentions of stray dogs, romanticizing the innocence of the times, suggesting this couple is like many other couples, all living collectively in a town of 150,000, each with their own story to tell, recalling Jules Dassin and The Naked City (1948).  Through voiceovers and intertitles, and occasional changes in film speed, there are lengthy passages of cinematic poetry, solitary moments that suggest little more than the passage of time, drawing attention to the beauty of the moment, yet the beating heart of the film is a reverence for soccer, endlessly watching kids at play, where boys, often playing without their shirts, are still playing with the girls, one showing her incredible dexterity with the ball, while dancing celebrations are the norm, juxtaposed against highly charged moments watching the World Cup.  It’s a brightly colored fantasy of joyful exuberance, which stands in stark contrast with the missing dream of the young couple, harshly robbed of their quickly developing romantic infatuation.  One part love story, another part city symphony, it all begins by overlooking something that should bring wonder, with the film quietly transforming into observing things far more commonplace, with suggestions that we need to see the world around us with an entirely new perspective.     

The film recalls Alan Rudolph’s trippy reincarnation romance flick MADE IN HEAVEN (1987), a fantasy-comedy with Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis, two souls who cross paths in Heaven and then attempt to reconnect once they are reborn on Earth, losing all remembrance of one another, having just 30-years to find their true love.  Search is the main ingredient of that film, while the journey, or odyssey, is the stuff of dreams in this one, with the narrator asking us to close our eyes and only open them again when we receive a sound signal, the magical moment of transformation.  It’s a bit crushing to lose someone so close to the outset, where they are the only ones who are affected, but Koberidze uses a clever aural trick, as an unhappy Lisa must look for a new job due to lack of money, yet an exhilarating piano spurt from a Schubert Impromptu ironically anticipates a joie de vivre that her character does not yet suspect.  Lisa attempts to break the curse, but she tries in vain, both seemingly stuck in time, helpless against the mysterious forces of fate.  Another side story includes a film-within-a-film, as two local filmmakers (the director’s actual parents) decide to make a film about couples in love and commission a photographer (Irina Chelidze) to suggest 50 couples who could take part in the film project, pairing them down to just six for the final cut, with Lisa and Georgi the last couple to be chosen, assured that there’s little chance they’d actually be chosen, yet this unexpectedly brings them closer together, especially when they make the final cut.  The bar owner sends them on a journey out into the countryside together to pick up a homemade birthday cake for his wife, a delightful excursion that reveals an abundance of pastoral delights, as others are there as well to pick up their cakes, all assembled beside an outdoor table, filmed from high above in a bird’s eye view, offering a resplendent look at the surrounding countryside, where people are viewed as tiny figures in a gloriously expanded landscape.  Divided into two sections, always following Lisa and Giorgi, though perhaps intentionally losing the main story, with the director keeping his eye sharpened for absurdities and also the terrible events of the present, reminding us of a catastrophic world, with last year’s burning of millions of hectares of forest, but it also includes a city where dogs meet to watch soccer at their favorite bar, enthralled by the face of Argentinian soccer magician Messi being projected onto frescoes and statues, while five young boys make a gargantuan climb up a steep stairway, each with Messi’s name and number painted on their bare backs, suggesting this is a director who fiercely celebrates the beauty of digression as an art form.  An artist who prefers the long form, Koberidze’s first film, LET THE SUMMER NEVER COME AGAIN (2017) was a three and a half hour film about a young Georgian who aspires to be a professional dancer in Tbilisi, but falls in love with a military officer, a film that has never found a distributor.  That film, shot entirely on a cell phone, apparently repeats the horizontal bar game, so it’s a feat no one has been able to master in six cinema hours so far.  While the narrator may be whimsically offputting for some, turning people off to the fairy tale aspect of the film, viewers may get frustrated while enraptured at the same time, especially since so much of the rest is told with a near documentary style of cinéma vérité realism, exhibiting, perhaps, an imaginative hyper-realism, slowly evolving into a voluptuous, self-reflective, and thoroughly sensual film, always surrounded by incredible beauty, as the oddly unique style can be thoroughly enchanting.  Perhaps more than anything, this is a fiercely liberating cinema, breaking the boundaries of what’s considered acceptable, challenging viewers in new and different ways.  Not everyone will agree, as some will find it overlong, thinking nothing really happens over such an extended period of time, particularly those viewing it virtually at home, but the stunning innovation and cinematic allure of the film may remind some of Paolo Sorrentino’s magnificently gorgeous texture, yet this seems to exist in a world of its own, still demonstrating an Eastern European sensibility to Western audiences, as this has the feeling of an ancient story, just updated and modernized.  Hansel and Gretel had spells placed on them in the woods, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Valerie a týden divu) (1970) is an allegorical fairy tale, Argento’s Suspiria (1977) takes place at a boarding school where Black Magic was allegedly practiced, while Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922) drew extensively from Transylvanian folklore, so this sort of thing has been told many times before, but to the director’s credit, this version is uniquely different, yet still utterly captivating.