Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 6 May

All We Imagine as Light (Kapadia, 2024)

I saw a social media com­ment the oth­er day from a crit­ic say­ing they had just watched All We Imagine as Light for the third time and I thought, Yes! Why aren’t we still talk­ing about this film?

Possibly because the Indian author­it­ies decided not to advance its claims for a Best International Film Oscar, it seems to have just faded out of the dis­course. Also, five months on from being released in cinemas (at one of the most com­pet­it­ive times of year), it’s not that easy to see.

I reviewed it for RNZ dur­ing my At the Summer Movies stint back in January:

In All We Imagine as Light, two Malayalam nurses are flat­ting togeth­er in a tiny apart­ment in mod­ern day Mumbai. One day a box arrives unex­pec­tedly on their door­step, addressed to the older one, Prabha (played by Kani Kusruti). It’s a flash rice cook­er and it has been sent dir­ect from an online retail­er, so the bene­fact­or isn’t obvious.

Prabha knows, how­ever, that a German appli­ance like this has prob­ably come from her hus­band, who is work­ing there but who has­n’t been in con­tact with her since their arranged mar­riage a year ago. The pres­ence of this machine is upset­ting to the usu­ally calm and self-possessed seni­or nurse. Does it mean that he is com­ing back? Or is going to call for her? Or is it a farewell gift, a kind of apo­logy for an arrange­ment that has­n’t worked out.

Prabha is still young and has a suit­or – a doc­tor at the hos­pit­al where she works – but she takes her vows ser­i­ously and con­siders her­self to be a mar­ried woman. Where does all this leave her?

Meanwhile, her young­er flat­mate Añu (played by Divya Prabha) is in a secret rela­tion­ship with a young Muslim man (played by Hridhu Haroon). She is in the full bloom of young romance but it’s unclear what sort of future there is in either of their com­munit­ies for a rela­tion­ship like that.

And there is a third woman, older Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), who is a cook at the hos­pit­al but who is being threatened with evic­tion from her tene­ment flat after the death of her husband.

These are women whose stor­ies are rarely told on screen at all, let alone with such grace and such ten­der­ness. Mumbai has a pop­u­la­tion of over 12 mil­lion people and there’s a ruth­less­ness about life there. Prabha, Añu, Pravaty and their friends do their best to main­tain a social and pro­fes­sion­al com­munity but it’s only when they leave the city for Pravaty’s home vil­lage, over 350km away, that they truly become themselves.

Just before I go, I want to acknow­ledge a couple of com­ments on yesterday’s news­let­ter. Thanks to read­er HG of Wellington who saw the Marlon Williams doc­u­ment­ary over the weekend:

Fantastic insight into what I see as a bit of a tor­tured geni­us who is still look­ing to find himself.

And read­er CP of Auckland asked “Also, did you like Thunderbolts*?” which. look­ing back at my review, is a fair question!

I did like Thunderbolts* and I think I like it more from the dis­tance of a few days.

The editor-in-chief and I talked about it over break­fast this morn­ing, spe­cific­ally the fact that the big battle takes place on Park Avenue, out­side the old Avengers Building (aka Stark Tower), a loc­a­tion designed to bring to mind that fam­ous “Avengers Assemble” scene in Joss Whedon’s 2012 Avengers movie – the battle against Loki’s army arriv­ing from a portal in the sky over New York.

Firstly, the Thunderbolts have no inten­tion of assem­bling at this point. They’ve just been beaten soundly and con­sider them­selves “losers”.

The second big dif­fer­ence between the Thunderbolts* Park Avenue battle is that it isn’t even a battle. The her­oes of this film use their powers to pro­tect the inno­cent cit­izens of New York from the dev­ast­a­tion being wreaked by an uncar­ing Sentry above them.

Back in 2013, I wrote this about Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and the same applies, think to all the super­hero films of the period:

I don’t have room here (because there are actu­al good films I’d rather talk about) to tear the Man of Steel apart but I will float a few thoughts that have been both­er­ing me recently about block­buster movies gen­er­ally: It seems to me that the huge amounts of com­put­ing horsepower that dir­ect­ors have at their fin­ger­tips nowadays is being used, for the most part, to des­troy.

I’m get­ting very tired of watch­ing build­ings, streets and even entire cit­ies razed digit­ally to the ground without a second thought for the (admit­tedly still digit­al) people inhab­it­ing them. This is an arms race and some­how dir­ect­ors (like MoS’s Zack Snyder) have decided that every new tent­pole needs to use even more ima­gin­a­tion to des­troy even more stuff and kill even more people who will go unmourned by the her­oes sup­posedly there to pro­tect them.

Thunderbolts* does pay atten­tion to the people on the ground who become col­lat­er­al dam­age in the cross­fire between super-beings. The film as a whole is much more inter­ested in con­sequences – for the her­oes and for the pub­lic – and is more inter­est­ing and respect­able as a result.

Where to watch All We Imagine as Light

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al (not avail­able on AroVision for some reason)

Australia: Digital rental

Canada & USA: Streaming on Criterion Channel

Ireland: Not cur­rently avail­able online

India: Streaming on Hotstar

UK: Streaming on BFI Player