284. Indian director Payal Kapadia’s 2nd feature film “All We Imagine as Light” (2024) in Malayalam, Hindi, and other Indian languages: An honest, sophisticated perspective of real India, intelligently presented

 

"There is always a feeling that I have to leave." -- an off-screen remark on the cloud of impermanence faced by an Indian immigrant to Mumbai, the Indian metropolis 

"Desire, love, religion, class, gender, and social structures--all come under director Payal Kapadia's close and sensitive gaze. The ensemble's tender and unadorned performance also deserves special mention"--Special Mention by the Jury of the Denver International Film Festival, 2024

Very few Indian films have been able to pack in considerable realistic socio-political details and cinematic styles as Ms Payal Kapadia accomplished in All We Imagine as Light, comparable to similar contemporary cinematic works made elsewhere.  Further, her modest film is bereft of high-cost special effects or an alluring star-cast value associated with commercial cinema. While it appears simple and ordinary documentation of real life, it merely blankets the well-structured conceptualization that made it a remarkable work, providing a fresh, wholesome treat for a perceptive viewer.

The Realistic Details

Few film viewers and critics distinguish the difference in value between films perceived as great works that were essentially the adaptation of existing creative materials (novels, plays, short stories, etc.)  or true historical incidents when compared to films built on an original screenplay conceived and written by the director of the film. All We Imagine as Light belongs to the latter group. When Ms Kapadia chose to make a film on the lower-middle class population in a city, which is also a home to some of the world's richest billionaires, her choice to build her film around two nurses, among all possible professions she could have chosen to build her tale of compassion and camaraderie was most appropriate. Care-givers are often invisible wall-flower cinematic characters, while doctors are more likely to be hogging the spotlight. Kapadia's Florence Nightingales are strengthened mentally to deal squeamish situations. The main character in the film deals with a dementia patient who imagines conversations she had with her husband in the past. That very sequence prepares the viewer to link it to the somewhat similar sequence much later on in the film. 

Kapadia's choice of nurses as principal characters become strategic in the development of her film.  A nurse becomes empathetic towards a worried cook she interacts with at her workplace and discovers her problems--fleshing out her screenplay as it unfolds. Kapadia's choice of Malayalee nurses is again commendable as these professionals from the state of Kerala have spread their wings far and wide to distant lands gaining appreciation and goodwill. Not many will note that Kapadia is not a Malayalee from Kerala making a film that is predominantly in Malayalam language.

Kapadia's film, which is considerably Mumbai-centric, is different from the two Kolkata-centric Indian  trilogies, made in the Seventies, by the acclaimed Indian directors Satyajit Ray (Pratidwandi; Seemabaddha; and Jano Aranya) and Mrinal Sen (Interview; Calcutta '71 and Padatik) because all those six films were adaptations of well-known written works in Bengali language. The closest comparable work to Kapadia's film would be Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar, which won the director a Silver Bear award at the Berlin Film festival in 1963; but that film too was an adaptation of a literary work of  Narendranath Mitra. In comparison, Kapadia's work is truly original.

The world of Mumbai and the ever present camaraderie and goodwill of its immigrant Indian population with all the folks they rub shoulders with over time is infused into the screenplay. Indians are often inquisitive when they encounter someone they know who appears to be under stress or heading for trouble, bypassing their social pecking order, unlike their Occidental counterparts who insist on respecting privacy of others.

Prabha (Kani Kasruti, left) receives a surprise gift from
her husband working in Germany, while her roommate
Anu (right) inspects details of the gift

Prabha (Kani Kasruti), a married senior nurse, craves for her husband's physical and emotional presence after he left for Germany seeking greener pastures soon after her hurried marriage, arranged by her parents. Surprisingly, Prabha's husband, who sparingly communicates with her after his departure, sends her a surprise gift--an electric rice cooker. Prabha's longing for her husband is visually communicated by a brief sequence of Prabha, hugging her unused gift, when she is alone in her room, which she shares with her younger colleague Anu. Anu (Divya Prabha), another Hindu nurse, in contrast is unmarried and is having a surreptitious affair with a Muslim man, which is likely to be frowned upon by their respective families and friends in contemporary India with its increasing Hindutva intolerance and the fear of "love Jihad," realistic trends rarely touched in frothy commercial Indian cinema. Parvati (Chhaya Kadam), the hospital cook, is widowed and possibly childless, and is forced out her 2-decade-old dwelling by uncaring land developers because her dead husband either never had or never chose to share with her any document of ownership or tenancy. Kapadia's social commentary on the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor is underscored when two principal women characters in the film pelt stones in the night at a land-developer's hoarding to attract real estate buyers of a new housing project built on acquired land that once belonged to the poor. The hoarding has the ironic and magnetic words: "Class is a Privilege. Reserved for the Privileged." Even flooding of parts of Mumbai leading to stoppage of local trains are cleverly weaved into the script. Casual viewers are likely to miss out on the critical socio-political commentary that dot the film, if they were merely concentrating on the story.

Anu (Divya Prabha) is lost in happy dreams while having
a respite from dealing with patients
at her hospital counter, where she soon
gives helpful advice to a lady patient on birth control

Similarly, Kapadia developed Prabha and Anu to be different, yet complementary and seemingly inverse of the other. Prabha is marrie d, mature, true to her spouse and rejecting the overtures of a qualified doctor also from Kerala but accepting her destiny of being married and living alone. Anu is young, adventurous, and rebellious enough to test the social and religious prejudices of the day. Parvati's character seems have a limited role of merely presenting the unpredictability of Mumbai for the less educated immigrants. 

Much of Kapadia's script reflects the real India and is obliquely in consonance with the Indian Opposition parties' views on economic conditions of the poor in India. Even the man rescued from drowning states that he was toiling in a job where he could not differentiate between night and day. That comment from the rescued man leads us to the styles employed in the film.

Styles Adopted in Kapadia's Film

Light is a key element not just in the title of the film All We Imagine as Light but equally important in the structure of the screenplay. The man rescued from drowning in the sea speaks of having toiled somewhere where he could not distinguish night from day. 

Very rarely does one see daylight in the Mumbai sequences. When it is day, the characters are indoors with electric lights brightening up their working space. When they are home after work, their small room is lit up by electric lights.  

Sequences outside Mumbai is swathed in sunlight. Here Anu is 
lost in her dreamworld of her future with her lover.

Daylight is reserved for the mid-segment of the film, when Prabha and Anu accompany Parvati to her rural home near the sea-shore after Parvati loses her right to stay on in her dwelling in Mumbai. Even when Prabha enters Parvati's modest house with reduced daylight, Prabha instinctively tries to switch on an electric light switch noticing it but realizes that there is no electricity. Otherwise there is sunlight throughout Prabha's and Anu's stay in Parvati's sea-side village, except when Prabha and Anu await their bus to board for their return to Mumbai, with bright-colored lights decorating the pre-dawn open-air shanty restaurant.

Cineastes familiar with contemporary world cinema will recall Carlos Reygadas' film Silent Light (2007) and its unforgettable opening and closing sequences. In that film, the opening sequence begins with insects chirping in the night until dawn breaks and reverses the gradual changes light and sound for its end-sequence. That film too, is all about light and darkness, metaphorically used to tell a tale. That film also won awards at Cannes and Chicago film festivals, the very same festivals that first honored Kapadia's film, 17 years apart. In both films, the respective directors wrote their original screenplays. Darkness and light can indeed be used as parentheses in the ever-evolving cinematic grammar to separate key sections for cine-literate audiences, beyond the limits of the common Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde scenario.

In this film All We Imagine as Light, light could well refer to the aspirations and dreams of immigrant Indians in Mumbai.

Kapadia treads into the world of magic realism as Prabha interacts with a person she had resuscitated after being rescued from drowning in the sea, in a manner used effectively by Italian director Ermanno Olmi in The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988) in a magical sequence in a bar where the protagonist assumes an elderly couple sitting across his table are his dead parents communicating with him.

Kapadia might have upset the current Government in power with her films and implicit commentary. With her mother the talented painter Nalini Malani's genes in her blood, she is already stealing a march over the best of Indian film directors over several decades. 

All We Imagine as Light is not just a film that has won the Grand Prix at Cannes and the Silver Hugo at Chicago in the annals of Indian cinema or the first Golden Globe nomination for an Indian director. It is a film that transcends Bollywood that makes films in Hindi, and regional cinema that limits language to small geographical areas of the Indian map. The film has gone beyond the late Bengali director Karlovy Vary film festival winning Mrinal Sen's film Oka Oorie Katha (1977) in Telugu language, adapting Munshi Premchand's Hindi literary work Kafan, with actors from Karnataka state. Payal Kapadia's effort will go a long way in introducing the concept of an Indian film that unifies India with a mix of Indian languages and cultures. 

P.S. This critic values his brief encounter as a journalist in the early-Eighties with Payal Kapadia's mother Nalini Malani at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, on one of her paintings on exhibit. All We Imagine as Light is now on this critic's list of best Indian films and one of best cinematic works of 2024.

283. The Vietnamese director Thien An Pham’s debut feature film “Ben trong vo ken vang“ (Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell) (2023), based on his original screenplay: Searching for faith and meaning in life, following a recent personal tragedy

 

 

 

 

“Faith is what I am searching for” --answers the film’s main character, Thien, to his toddler nephew’s question, on what is faith, soon after his dead mother is described publicly as someone who had strong faith  

“Would you give your favorite toys to your friend and did you think he would to return them to you?” Thien asks his nephew  

“He will return them to me because he is good,” answers the nephew  

“Faith is a little bit like that,” Thien explains to his nephew

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is nearly 3-hours long, bereft of sex, violence, or crime. Further, it is slow-moving, philosophical, magical (literally and metaphorically) and charming--aspects missing in most contemporary American and British films. You don’t see fast cars in this Vietnamese film; instead you see mopeds that often breakdown, traversing dirt tracks more often than on proper paved roads. Much of what you see in the film is rural contemporary Vietnam with birds, animals and human beings sharing space and time. Cocks crow before dawn and humans wake early to trap wild, well-fed cocks that fight for fresh territory with others. This is not a film that could conventionally compete and win an Oscar. Yet, this film has won the coveted 2023 Golden Camera award at the Cannes international film festival , from amongst debut films competing in all the competitive sections of the 2023 festival. The Vietnamese film  was chosen in the ‘Director’s Fortnight’ section and won the coveted award that transcends the conventional borders of that particular section of the festival. A dream-start for a young, relatively unknown filmmaker’s career who scripted a mature screenplay with the lead character sharing the director’s name.

Thien and his toddler nephew accompany 
his sister-in-law Hanh's coffin to his village

What is remarkable about this work is the swathe of complex ideas that fill the film’s canvas as the young filmmaker Thien paints it. The film opens with a near-monologue over dinner for three in a small, crowded restaurant in Saigon over the opportunities offered in city life versus those in rural Vietnam. The ensuing film does discuss that in a meandering manner. What is equally remarkable is that the film’s cinematography and the diegetic soundtrack that could amaze perceptive viewers, who notice those aspects while watching a film over the more obvious narrative.   

Thein (back to the camera) listens to former soldier Lu'u
in his humble abode. There is no music, only diegetic sound. 

 As the film unspools, there are ordinary conversations between young and old, strangers and villagers who have known each other’s families over decades; small birds that enter the film’s narrative and then die, adding to the mosaic of lives offered in the film;  magic tricks to entrance kids (and even elder viewers of the film) with props such as a finger-sized bell that proves to have a tale of its own as the film progresses; and dialogs between different elders and Thien that reek of wisdom and philosophy rarely encountered in a film made by a young director. The connection between Thien and his elders are as mystical as varied encounters of Thien has with nature (rain, butterflies, sericulture cocoons, dreams of aggressive buffaloes that sense danger only to turn around, the soothing invitation of the flowing waters of a brook). 

Searching for his brother Tam,
Thien encounters the wise old lady who experienced
a near death event and has wisdom to impart for his search

After the conversation with the old lady, Thien falls asleep
at the same spot, and dreams of an encounter with buffaloes

On waking up, Thien has an urge to walk in the rain,
until encountering the shrub with white butterflies

Each character populating the film offers depth to the screenplay. Thiem’s brother Tam, who has suddenly left his wife and son, had wanted and to be a priest, until his theological teachers advised him to get married instead. Tam’s wife Hanh is described as a woman of “faith,” who wanted to give birth to her unborn child, even after doctors had warned her that the child would be born without arms. A former soldier who had fought in the Vietnam war and had once enjoyed war combats as a young man, explains to Thien that he no longer has interest in lucre even when it is offered to him by Thien and instead  prefers to live a humble life, preparing shrouds for the dead in his village. Then there is an old lady, who claims to have endured a near death experience, providing philosophical solace to Thien in his quest to locate his elder brother to inform him of his wife Hanh’s passing and of his son being admitted into a convent where Thien’s former sweetheart, now a nun, teaches the tiny tots.  

  

Thien gets closer to finding his brother Tam (a sericulturist) 
and holds Tam's child surrounded by yellow silk cocoons

Tam's new wife with Tam's child leads Thien to Tam's
work spot 

At Tam's work spot, Thien falls asleep, Tam's wife and child
disappear, and the farm owner (back to camera) states
that there is no Tam there. (For confused filmgoers. the
maroon bag on the moped is crucial to explain matters)

What is stunning is the long single shot of Thien holding Tam’s baby in his arms and the shot ending without cuts with Thien sleeping on his moped alone and being woken up by the farm owner who states that there is no person named Tam anywhere near his farm.  These are aspects (sleep, dreams, etc.) in Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell that any knowledgeable filmgoer will recall of the Thai  director Weerasethakul’s superb film  Memoria, another cinematic tale connecting death, history  and the present or the long takes of the Greek director Angelopoulos, drifting in time within a single shot. The sudden rains (common in Vietnam and other parts of Asia) is intentionally used as a stylistic device to blur time and space. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, as in Zvyaginstev’s The Return or Tarkovsky’s earth sequences in Solaris uses rain to invite Thien  on a dreamlike walk that offers images akin to Joycean epiphanies (white butterflies on a particular shrub in the rain). Could it be a mulberry shrub? The viewer is equally reminded of Theo Angelopoulos’ films (e.g., Eternity and a Day) of the historical connections of the Vietnam war and the present and the present through the memories of elders, such as the former soldier Lu’u, content making shrouds for the dead remarking that there will be no one else to do it, if he stopped doing it.

The last shot: Thien lies in the brook as the gently flowing
waters of the brook stroke his body

     

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell may not appeal to the millions who love commercial cinema and believe the Oscars, the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes honor the best in world cinema, oblivious of good cinema of a different kind being made elsewhere on the globe. That is where the three big film festivals of the world (Cannes, Berlin, and Venice) step in to alert us to the fact such films do exist.  Knowledgeable folks know that even Hollywood’s best filmmakers compete in those festivals for early valuable recognition before the Oscar circus.  

 

Thien An Pham’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell has heralded the arrival of a new prodigy from Vietnam. This cinematic product amply proves that any young director with talent will get world recognition, if the film’s style and content are original and admirable, while specifically not spoon-feeding a lazy viewer on what the film is all about. A good film has to ultimately make the viewer think.     

P.S. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell won the Golden Camera award at Cannes, the Roberto Rossellini award for the Best Film at the Pingyao (China) and the Best Asian feature film award at the Singapore international film festival. Three films, mentioned in passing in the above review—Memoria, The Return and Solaris have been reviewed on this blog earlier and those reviews can be accessed by clicking on their names in this postscript. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is listed by the author as one of  the Best Films of 2023.