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| All We Imagine As Light |
Mumbai-based director Payal Kapadia's directorial feature début, All We Imagine As Light, is a deeply sensitive female centred drama with an international flavour. It feels like Kapadia has folded into her independent Indian feature a certain European and American aesthetic. It shouldn't be surprising given that Kapadia, with the support of European development funds, worked with the film's French producers in Europe before shooting the film in India.
The story revolves around the relationship between three nurses: Prabha (Kani Kusruti), Anu (Divya Prabha) and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam). Each have their own dramas. Prabha receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband, stirring up past memories. Anu risks her reputation when she falls in love with a secret boyfriend, while Parvaty is threatened with eviction. Beginning in Mumbai and ending in a quiet beach town, the three women set out on their own journeys of self-discovery while developing deep bonds of friendship.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Kapadia discussed the intangible aspects of the creative process, discovering clarity of her intentions in hindsight and her desire to have her film be an act of remembrance.
Paul Risker: What does cinema mean to you personally?
Payal Kapadia: As a filmmaker and a cinephile, cinema makes life more interesting because it makes me look at the world and find something interesting in the way it looks - the people I meet, the interactions I have, or the feelings I experience. All of these things become more interesting when you're a filmmaker.
Sometimes people ask me what's the inspiration I'm looking for? Everything is inspiring. That's the joy; that's the privilege.
PR: Storytellers take different approaches, but to speak about theme, are you attentive to specific themes from the outset or is it a journey of discovery for you?
PK: I never have a sense of the whole, the theme or any of these things. I work by jotting down characters and scenes based on those characters, which may not be chronological but random. Then I like to see what it is I'm moving towards with these scenes. I further develop that to find a story to connect them. So, it's only after the film is made that I've a larger sense of what it was that was preoccupying me [laughs].
I think you're drawn to the same questions in your mind, and you try to find the answers in every one of your films. At least for me, and in a lot of my work, whether it's about love or desire or longing, it has to do with these questions you have about yourself and the world. But it's not a conscious thing where it's the question I have today. It's more that as soon as you start writing, you are drawn to similar ideas that preoccupy you, and I feel that's very instinctive. You don't understand why, you're just drawn to those themes.
PR: The creative process is partly an unconscious one and so the idea that every choice is deliberate is naïve. Instead, an important part of the process is relinquishing control.
PK: I agree because a lot of times it's only after the film is done and I'm asked questions about it that I realise, 'Oh, this is what I thought about it' [laughs]. Of course, I might have thought about it, but not in a conscious way that I could explain it to somebody. Instead, it was there in the back of my mind and being forced to articulate that makes the reasons for certain choices clearer to you. I don't know how other people work, but for me it's not that calculated or intellectual. It's very instinctive and it comes from an emotional space.
PR: One of the things that struck me was the way you don't expose the characters. Instead, you allow them to reveal themselves.
PK: Now that you're saying this, I'm thinking about it [laughs]. I tried to move away from expositional cinema where everything needs an explanation. People are unpredictable, and we try so hard to categorise them. We use things like the Zodiac signs as a way to explain the complete randomness of human behaviour. Of course, there will be some psychological impact of things we experience, but fundamentally, who knows?
I don't know how to answer the question - I discover the character as I write. It's not that I say 'This person is exactly like this.' I write pages and pages of the character's diary entries for example. So, I have a lot of Prabha's diaries - if she had a diary, what would she write? I think of every character's personal way of communication and for Anu, I wrote a lot of letters which that she could write to her mother. She doesn't send these, it's more if she had to address her mother, how would she talk about things? I also sometimes write letters from one character to another, which are not real-world letters, but if they had to say whatever they wanted to say, then what would they say?
This comes from internalising the characters and because I'm always writing, experiencing a stream of consciousness. I write a lot - 15 to 20 pages of this stuff every time I get down to it. This is how I discover the characters for myself and the choices I want to make. Sometimes I read them again and I edit out certain things because things didn't feel right for the flow.
Maybe it's because I am discovering characters in this way that you felt this when you were watching the film.
PR: What I like is by the end, even the characters don't fully understand themselves. All We Imagine As Light appreciates that the film is a chapter in the lives of its characters, and as the American director Billy Wilder said, the audience are left to imagine what happens next. Film as commerce, however, doesn't appreciate this nuance, nor the spiritual side of cinema.
PK: I totally agree, and it allows for something that's not very tangible - a shift inside you, not a change. […] The best stories are ones that are incomplete and allow for the person watching them to imagine what comes after. Not in a way that's still confusing but untangling how it made you feel, and what these characters meant for you. And still feeling emotionally connected to the space of the story. Sometimes when a film is too packed and is complete it's like, 'Okay, this is over now, I'll go and do something else.' I like films that somehow penetrate your bloodstream.
PR: The use of music was also striking, especially some of the piano arrangements and the way you used music instead of words to penetrate the souls of the characters.
PK: A lot of my choices for music is just how I feel when I listen to the music. I just heard this song, The Homeless Wanderer and I don't have the words to say how it made me feel. It was just a feeling - like the feeling you have when you read a good love story, or you are excited to go and meet somebody you have been thinking about. […]
If I had to believe in some idea of godliness, it would be to have that out of body moment when you feel you're in love and when you see great art. And I had that with this music. So, I wanted to use it as the romantic motif between the lovers.
PR: I recall reading a quote that said explaining why you love a piece of music undermines the experience.
PK: The best films are the ones you can't explain. It's not about the story; it's about the feeling of the film and thank God, you can't explain it in words, otherwise you wouldn't be making the film.
PR: Watching All We Imagine As Light, I was reminded of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Bringing Out The Dead in an early scene that tracks through the streets of Mumbai.
PK: I'm not familiar with these films. I did have a lot of influences like Chantal Akerman's Notes From Home (1976) and Marguerite Duras' Negative Hands (1978), which is a marvellous film about the city waking up with voiceover and music. That's my favourite film of Duras'. It's a very short film but it's really nice.
PR: You've spoken about the importance of instincts and feelings. Did influences instinctively creep into the film?
PK: Yes, of course. I watch a lot of films; I'm a big cinephile and I really like essay films - films that are formalistically hybrid. So, I try to watch as many of those films as I can get my hands on because those are sometimes the films that are harder to find.
I have a lot of references in the film and most times they're not conscious but sometimes they are, like the shot where she's cleaning the drum or the sand on the man's body. I thought a lot about Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and that reference of the bodies in the sand. So, this image was in my mind a lot and I wanted to remember Alain Resnais through this film. Other things are conscious like the red rice cooker - it's in so many films and I wanted to have that connection somewhere as well.
PR: Resnais' film belongs to the type of cinema that creates space for the audience to enter the film and become active participants or collaborators.
PK: For me that's the kind of cinema I enjoy, that has space. These gaps allow for a different kind of engagement, which is not necessarily logical or narrative, but maybe just emotional. It's about the life you've lived life and how you see it.
I notice that some people don't connect with my movie because they don't understand these feelings and that's fine. They ask me questions at the end like, "Well, what was the point?" That's bad and it happens, but then there are people howling and you can see when the lights come on that they've been crying. That's me most of the time in movies and the reason we experience films differently has a lot to do with our privileges and how we see the world.
All We Imagine As Light was released in UK and Irish cinemas by the BFI on Friday 29th November.
