Urban Life is a Beacon of Opportunity in Tender ‘All We Imagine as Light’

“There are eight million stories in the Naked City,” the narrator declared at the end of the late-’50s-early ’60s New York TV police procedural (as well as the 1948 movie that inspired it). “This has been one of them.”

Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s Cannes-awarded narrative feature debut, All We Imagine as Light (opening Friday, Nov. 22 at the Roxie, Smith Rafael Film Center and Cine Lounge Fremont 7), is uninterested in crime and cops. A slow-burn journey from the prosaic to the profound, this much-needed balm for the soul follows four everyday people threading their way among Mumbai’s 21 million stories.

Like every big city since forever, Mumbai attracts people from all over like moths to a flame with the promise of better-paying jobs. The movies, and real life to some extent, have taught us that cities are Meccas of endless possibilities, opportunities and destinies. In the Mumbai of All We Imagine as Light (and the cities where I’ve lived) jobs do exist but relationships are intense and generally short-lived.

“Some people call this the city of dreams, but I don’t,” an off-screen voice says while we watch trains traverse the sprawling nighttime landscape. “I think it’s the city of illusions.”

(Kapadia drops in other anonymous first-person testimonies from time to time that feel like actual interviews. Her first feature film, A Night of Knowing Nothing, was a documentary, so it’s a reasonable assumption.)

The three hospital staff who drive the film — strong, independent women of different generations who support themselves — have traded some of their dreams and all of their illusions for concrete reality. Ace head nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) has settled into a satisfying mid-career routine, but autonomy can’t conceal her loneliness — a yearning for being appreciated and valued outside the hospital.

Then a chance for romance presents itself. A doctor conveys his attraction to Prabha in the most vulnerable way imaginable: He gives her a poem (that, significantly, suggests a non-native’s solitary experience of city life). “My dreams are made of everyday things, small and scattered, that I have left behind,” he writes. “My hope is just another casket of things I carry with me wherever I go / And now, you are there in a neighbor’s house like a burning lamp whose glow I watch to keep me warm at night.”

Prabha shares her apartment with a spirited young nurse, Anu (an exceptional Divya Prabha), whose determination to live her life on her terms is exhilarating. Anu is agog when a mysterious package arrives, containing a German-made rice cooker, and we learn that Prabha is married, and her husband has worked and lived abroad for many years.

Anu can’t imagine acceding to a marriage arranged by her father, as Prabha did. No surprise since her boyfriend is Muslim, which would not sit well with her traditional Hindu family “back home.” The film’s youngest characters are the most acclimated to their adopted city; the scenes of Shiaz and Anu sharing meals at outdoor food stands and making out on park benches vibrate with excitement.

We ponder their future together when even long-term residents can be upended by unforeseen circumstances. The older hospital cook Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) is suddenly threatened with eviction after two decades in her apartment. Prabha finds her a lawyer, but he can’t help unless Parvaty locates some long-forgotten document.

The social commentary in All We Imagine as Light, such as it is, illuminates the characters and provides texture, color and depth. It never feels as if Kapadia has hobbyhorses to ride, such as modernity over tradition, or the profiteering of developers, or family planning as the responsibility of women (the upshot of a hospital interaction between Anu and a young mother).

Kapadia, like the late, great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, immerses us with uncommon empathy in the rhythms and struggles of everyday life. Implicit in both directors’ films is the individual’s responsibility to adjust (though not necessarily conform) to and contribute to the fabric of society.

Yet despite winning the Grand Prize at Cannes, All We Imagine as Light was not chosen as India’s official submission for the Academy Award for Best International Film. The Film Federation of India selected Laapataa Ladies, a charming, smart but more narratively and visually conventional film that’s streaming on Netflix. The FFI decision ignited a controversy that provoked its president to say about All We Imagine as Light, “The jury said that they were watching a European film taking place in India, not an Indian film taking place in India.”

I grant that the soundtrack by Topshe lends the film a Western indie vibe. But the film also has a lovely dance duet to an Indian pop song that reminds us Bollywood is not far away. In any event, the FFI statement offers a singularly confining view of Indian cinema. At the same time, it’s a terrific endorsement for American fans of arthouse films.

Midway through the intoxicating All We Imagine as Light, Prabha and Anu accompany Parvaty to her coastal village in Ratnagiri. Unbeknownst to them, quiet revelations await. Don’t worry, the movie doesn’t turn into a simplistic reverie about how the countryside is better — more down to earth, more authentic — than the city.

But the tone does shift, from neorealism to magical near-realism. The fluid, frenetic movement of the city (exemplified by those ubiquitous trains) and the glare of nighttime lights evaporate in the rural setting. Unexpected possibilities emerge, if the characters will embrace them.

After Prabha reveals the existence of her absent husband, someone says, “When people go abroad, they can lose their minds, or their memory. That’s how it is.” It can also happen when someone migrates to a city. Or from one city to another. Or, for that matter, when they move home.

As a lifelong city dweller, I experienced All We Imagine as Light as a generous gift. Share it widely.