Payal Kapadia's extraordinarily transfixing All We Imagine as Light has visual mastery to spare

Chantal Akerman's 1976 documentary Notes from Home is both expansive and intimate. This motion picture restricts its gaze to extended unbroken takes of assorted New York City destinations, with the camera gently and slowly gliding across these domains. Viewers witness countless ordinary people go about their lives in this bustling city while the soundtrack focuses on Akerman reading aloud letters from her mother back in Brussels, Belgium. These pieces of correspondence contain everything from news about pregnancies to exciting marriage announcements to Akerman’s mother constantly insisting that she receive a photograph of her daughter in the Big Apple. The chaos of one of the world’s biggest cities is juxtaposed against deeply intimate, personal letters between mother and daughter.

Writer/director Payal Kapadia starts All We Imagine as Light captivatingly with an opening sequence evoking Notes from Home. In the case of Light, Kapadia focuses on various images of routine nightlife in Mumbai, India. Crowds of people make their way to a train station, others unload fruit from trucks. These wide shots never zero in on one person, instead capturing an army of different existences colliding. In sharp contrast, these images unfold against voice-over narration from various Mumbai residents speaking in a wide array of languages. Each voice has deeply specific experiences to impart, including how one person has come to Mumbai because “all the jobs and opportunities are here.” We receive a deeply personal auditory window into their soul while witnessing the sweeping city they occupy.

Expansiveness and intimacy. Two opposites nestled within this scene. Kapadia makes Akerman proud with All We Imagine as Light’s opening sequence. It’s an appropriate bravura kick-off for an extraordinary motion picture.

After this opening sequence, Kapadia narrows her gaze to the film's two lead characters. Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Pabha) are a pair of nurses working in the same office who also live together in a cozy Mumbai apartment. Like any good movie roommates, the duo couldn't be more different from one another if they tried. Pabha is a woman bruised by the past. Her heart still aches from a husband who went to Germany and never came back. Anu, meanwhile, is a spirited soul carrying out a hush-hush relationship with the handsome Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). Given that Shiaz is Muslim, the duo's romance is kept secret, even from Prabha.

All We Imagine as Light is one of my favorite kinds of movies: explorations of everyday challenges. Just existing within the suffocating confines of capitalism is enough to drain the energy from your soul. Sometimes, modern cinema's ignorance of woes like rent payments or wealth inequality can make me feel like I'm going insane. Am I the only one experiencing these woes? Quietly melancholy pieces of observational cinema like All We Imagine as Light function as artistic pats on the back to everyday people. Proletariat concerns are finally realized in a modern film landscape often more concerned with humanizing TV producers or letting billionaires mold our society.

It’s a sterling accomplishment extending Kapadia's artistic interests. After all, her feature-length directorial debut, A Night of Knowing Nothing, challenged, among other societal norms, the demonization of student protestors in India under Narendra Modi's oppressive rule. That working-class gaze is as subversive to cinema norms as it is emotionally affecting. All We Imagine as Light impeccably stirs the soul with its quietly moving depictions of human connection. I could’ve watched Anu and Shiaz trade boner jokes on a train for days, they’re just so cute together. Prabha and Haroon's deeply engaging rapport is further exemplified in a later sequence depicting an initially distant Anu becoming increasingly warm towards Shiaz as he teases out some potential romantic “plot”.

Kapadia and cinematographer Ranabir Das capture this unspeakably cute exchange in an unbroken take. Going this visual route allows one to truly soak in Prabha and Harron’s impressively subtle acting. Prabha especially does exemplary work instantly selling a hurt, aloof aura that gradually gets chipped away through Harron’s playful aura. Watching this transition occur in real-time in Prabha’s assured hands is nothing short of marvelous. As a cherry on top, this scene further sells Anu and Shiaz as an incredibly endearing couple. Even the subtle framing of other people in the corners of the frame of this shot is a commendable detail. These two feel like they’re the only ones in the world in each other’s arms. However, these background figures remind moviegoers of the larger societal stigma Anu and Shiaz contend with.

Visual preciseness permeates every inch of All We Imagine as Light, including in one visual motif consisting of characters (namely Prabha) speaking in narration while disconnected wide shots of Mumbai or nearby forests fill the screen. This isn’t just a technique allowing that striking opening sequence to reverberate throughout the entire film. It also communicates that Prabha’s emotions can’t be confined to one location or room. Just watching her speak these words while surrounded by four walls wouldn’t properly communicate the expansiveness of her feelings. The aching inspired by her inexplicably receiving a rice cooker from Germany (a reminder of her missing spouse) alone deserves a grand cinematic tableau.

Repeatedly shifting the camera to these external locales also reinforces the larger societal specifics Prabha, Anu, and other characters inhabit. Akerman’s Notes from Home used both emotionally complicated letters and mundane footage capturing every imperfect New York City crevice to paint a deeply nuanced portrait of this city and its inhabitants. This film focused on the emotional intricacies that wouldn’t fit into a postcard. All We Imagine as Light also echoes Notes from Home in painting a more complicated picture of a famous city known as “a promised land.”

One especially unforgettable sequence encapsulating this theme lingers on images of various Mumbai citizens celebrating in the streets as a glorious parade passes by. Dancing is everywhere, confetti seems to rain from the heavens. However, voice-over narration from various Mumbai residents of countless languages returns for this scene to undercut the on-screen euphoria. Here, various voices mournfully remark about “an unspoken agreement” that people in lower financial and societal castes can’t complain about their situation. So demanding are the obligations of everyday capitalistic existence that, as one narrator puts it, "You have to believe the lie or you’ll go crazy.”

It's a mesmerizingly concocted sequence right down to the tiniest details. That includes the deftly-timed cuts (courtesy of editor Clément Pinteaux) between images of Mumbai citizens celebrating. It’s a testament to Payal Kapadia's creative assuredness (on her feature-length narrative film directorial debut no less!) that she juggles both richly detailed and visually sparse sequences in All We Imagine as Light with equal deftness. Intimate camerawork chronicling Prabha, Anu, and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) casually drinking and laughing together is just as captivating as more elaborate juxtaposition-heavy stretches of the runtime.

That deeply chummy gaze of Kapadia's camera also makes All We Imagine as Light a triumph in terms of pathos. Quiet depictions of human beings looking out for one another in a chaotic world consistently inspired lumps in my throat. An early depiction of Anu helping a woman who visits her office receive birth control establishes the kind of throwaway yet meaningful depictions of kindness informing Light's most moving sequences. Parvaty and Prabha eating in a restaurant the former character "constantly walked by yet never ate at" is also incredibly touching. Ditto a fleetingly witnessed moment where Anu gets help from other ladies while shopping for a hijab. The complexities of All We Imagine as Light’s merging intimate testimonies with expansive imagery are staggeringly impressive. So are its appropriately low-key renderings of people supporting each other.

Also, impressing in All We Imagine as Light? The cinematography proves that shooting on digital is not a kiss of death for a motion picture's visual scheme. Truth be told while watching the feature, I assumed I was witnessing something shot on 35 or 16mm! But no, according to an interview with Ranabir Das for Cooke Optics (which provided S4/i Prime Lenses for Light's cameras), budgetary constraints informed capturing this feature digitally. Das also emphasizes a desire to maintain a gritty reality in Light’s images. That approach vividly comes through in the final film. When Anu and Shiaz strolled on a rocky beach surface, I could feel the pebbles crunching between their toes. Rooms these characters inhabit feature as tactile wear-and-tear as any 1970s New York City drama set in run-down apartments.

Shots like two human beings physically intertwining in the throes of romance harken back to the richly detailed images of Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Woman in the Dunes, not distractingly clean visuals often associated with digital cinematography. Mainstream American movies are shot digitally, it’s time to step up to the plate. The gauntlet has been tossed. Shooting on film did not turn the Jurassic World installments into movies that would make Gregg Toland weep with joy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, All We Imagine as Light’s magnificent filmmaking reaffirmed (like The Social Network or Barbie) that shooting digitally does not automatically produce subpar images.

All We Imagine as Light’s unforgettable visual scheme lives up to one of the oldest phrases used to praise a movie: “a delight from beginning to end.” In this case, Light imagery stuns from its richly human opening sequence to its quietly tear-inducing last shot, which may be the best final image in all of 2024 cinema. All these glorious images realize an emotionally gripping yarn centered on individual personalities trying to vividly shine against the constraints of capitalism and societal expectations. All We Imagine as Light begins evoking one of Chantal Akerman’s greatest works. Very quickly, though, Payal Kapadia reaffirms a command of filmmaking putting her in a class of her own.