All We Imagine As Light [dir. Payal Kapadia]

"Hope" is the thing with feathers...

In the creative sphere, poet Emily Dickinson is rarely cited as anybody's conscious influence, but her most-quoted line hits upon such a fundamental truth, its underlying sentiment has powered almost every major humanist work in our world. Hope is truly what keeps us going, whether in terms of taking on herculean challenges, grappling with powerful opposing forces or even merely surviving. I realize this sounds like an overly profound opening; in that sense it mirrors Payal Kapadia piloting us into her film's world, the bustling Mumbai metropolis where millions jostle each other. Their thoughts spoken out Wings of Desire style, we hear these jostlers individually, taste their unique cocktails of despair and hope.

Then we zoom into a microcosm of this universe, the hospital - not by coincidence, a place of hope and healing - and our main characters Prabha, Anu and Parvathy. Prabha (Kani Kusruti, Girls will be Girls) and Anu (Divya Prabha, Ariyippu / Declaration), both nurses* and flatmates, are linked by their Malayali heritage. Prabha is senior in both age and rank, and serves as an elder sister / guardian to Anu. Prabha is married, but has not seen her husband , an expat worker in Germany, since many years; even the telephonic conversations have died off. Anu meets her Muslim boyfriend Shiaz in secret, certain that her parents will never approve of the match. The feisty Parvathy (Chhaya Kadam), a Maharashtrian who serves as cook at the hospital, has troubles of her own in the form of real estate bigwigs that are forcibly acquiring her tenement flat in the name of redevelopment. 

Prabha is like a forlorn flower, withered from the absence of romance. She is helpful and nurturing to her subordinates, but appears to have lost all hope of personal happiness. A message-less gift of a rice cooker is the only communication she has had in years from her absent spouse; one night, in an almost sexual manner, she hugs the appliance. But it also serves as a reminder of the obligation she has bound herself with - when the new doctor courts her, she gently brushes him off citing her married status. Anu is fresher, livelier. In her telephone conversations with home, she hides her relationship with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). During their clandestine meetings she is often the bolder party, talking dirty and initiating their lovemaking. But this boldness seems to come from a desperation to squeeze as much as she can from the relationship before its inevitable end. Parvathy comes across as more pragmatic than her educated colleagues - she is no defeatist for sure, but also sees no sense in prolonging a fight that cannot be won.

While episodic, All We Imagine...'s screenplay roughly has a three-part structure, one for each protagonist. The resolving act is spearheaded by Parvathy quitting her job and shifting back to her seaside village. Prabha and Anu help move her things (discovering in the process that she has shoplifted several hospital implements as 'souvenirs') and stay over. One evening a man is rescued from drowning, and Prabha uses her skills to tend to him, in a sense bringing him back to life. What follows between them is, depending on your POV, either a fantastic contrivance, a game of benevolent deceit or a fantasy playing in her mind. But it releases her from her emotional prison; she at last learns to love herself again. In the final scene, our three women are sitting side by side by the beach, their hearts at least for that moment in sync, fluttering with the thing called "Hope".

*Kerala in southern India is the biggest source of qualified nursing staff from the country.