Let there be ... no light?

Jul 26, 2024

I loved reading Anthony Lane’s reviews in The New Yorker. Even when he reviewed movies that I knew I would not watch, I read them because he was that good. And, of course, if the review was of a movie that I/we wanted to watch, then I read them well before watching the movies, and then re-read them after the experience.

And then Lane exited from the movie review pages.

I don’t recall reading any announcement. No nothing. I started seeing other names in the bylines. I skipped the movie reviews, hoping that Lane would come back. Issue after issue, there was no film review by Anthony Lane, but the magazine published essays by him. Sure, those essays were wonderful readings, but why wasn’t he reviewing movies?

I am yet to develop a reader-writer relationship with the new reviewers. I occasionally read a paragraph or two and then give up. It is not the same anymore. Maybe I am old, and even such changes are difficult to handle!

A couple of months ago, I read one of the reviewers, Justin Chang, in the magazine’s online-only content. I was drawn by the title: All the Films in Competition at Cannes, Ranked from Best to Worst. And even before I could scroll down in a hurry, I saw that the second best in his ranking of the 22 films in the competition was from India. Chang wrote about “All We Imagine as Light”:

As the first Indian feature invited to compete at Cannes in nearly three decades, Payal Kapadia’s narrative début (after her 2021 documentary, “A Night of Knowing Nothing”) would be notable enough; that the movie is so delicately felt and sensuously textured is cause for outright celebration. Winner of the festival’s Grand Prix, or second place, it tells the story of two roommates, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha), who work as nurses at a Mumbai hospital. It teases out their personal circumstances—Prabha’s estrangement from her unseen husband, Anu’s frowned-upon romance with a young Muslim man (Hridhu Haroon)—with a quiet truthfulness that, like the glittering lights of the city, lingers expansively in the memory.

I made a note to myself that I should watch “All We Imagine as Light”. I wondered whether the title would show up on Netflix, which is the only movie streaming channel to which we subscribe. We have watched a couple of arty Indian movies there before and, of course, the Oscar-winning documentary about the elephant whisperers. Maybe this movie too will show up sometime?

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I am a sucker for arty Indian movies. I have always been. Well, I did enjoy the mainstream movies, especially the melodic songs. But the “parallel cinema” as it was called in India was on a completely different plane.

Early in my life, when I was beginning to read about "art movies" that I didn't get to watch, I read in the news that a Tamil movie had won the national award for the best Tamil film: Agraharathil Kazhutai (A donkey in a Brahmin street).

Commentaries were written in plenty about the movie, and plenty of people were upset too. But, it was never screened anywhere for me to watch it.

Wikipedia reminds me that the movie was banned in Tamil Nadu, and that the government television channel, which was the only one that India had for years, was forced to cancel a scheduled telecast.

To date, I haven't watched the award-winning movie!

When I was young, I read about a group of youth who were convinced that the art movies would appeal to a lot more people if they actually watched it. So, they drove around to a few villages, with a portable movie projector and screen and speakers. This was back when movies were in reels and, therefore, one needed a projectionist who knew what to do.

The group was indeed correct in their assumption. A lot more people liked the art movies compared to what was thought as possible. But then how would one go about convincing commercial distributors and cinema owners, who view the mainstream commercial movies as a sure bet?

The parallel cinema continued on but only with a select audience.

Thankfully, the state-owned television channel, Doordarshan, which was the only channel that we had back then, regularly telecast some of those art movies.

I could finally watch movies that I had only read about in newspapers and magazines. The movies that rarely ever played in cinema houses but which, according to newspapers and magazines, had won awards both at home and abroad.

As art, and as stories about the real world and its people, those art movies outnumber the commercial ones that I remember and cherish even after all these years. Some stories were about the poor; a few were about the struggling middle-class; or were against a historical backdrop; one even made an Anglo-Indian woman the center of the story. They were about life that interested me, and the stories were told without the formulaic song/dance sequences and fights and melodramatic background music. In some, it even seemed like the actors had no makeup on.

These art movies did not cater to any set formula, and the endings often left the viewer exploring the story and the characters because, well, there was no formulaic ending. No bow tie to wrap up the box. If only they made more such movies in the old country!

The older I got, the more the mainstream movies became unwatchable, like in the instances that I have blogged about on the old platform. Every visit to India has been even more disappointing than the previous ones on how far removed society seems to be from art and culture. The divide between art vs. commercial movies in India was too wide back when I was a kid, and it seemed that the gap has further widened over the decades that I have been away from the old country.

Technology has made possible for us to watch movies from all corners of the world. Especially during the two pandemic years when the virus forced us to stay put, I often looked for art movies that told stories of life in India. A couple of movies came close enough, but were not anywhere near what the old masters created, which people like me remember even after decades. But, they give me hope that people in India have not given up on art.

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So, when will I be able to watch “All We Imagine as Light”?

Apparently I can if I am a subscriber to Mubi!

No Mubi means that I won’t get to watch the movie? Damn!

WaPo says that people in India should not hold their breath waiting for this or other award-winning indie films from their own country. (The free link will work for non-subscribers also)

At the Cannes Film Festival in May, “All We Imagine As Light,” a film about the friendship between three female nurses from small towns making their way in the Mumbai megalopolis, won a top award — a first for any film made by an Indian.
But its director, Payal Kapadia, says that although the movie will definitely be released in the state Kerala, her producers are still trying to figure out how to get it released nationwide.
“Do I see her film getting the kind of play it deserves here? Absolutely not,” said Shubhra Gupta, one of India’s foremost film critics. “That this kind of filmmaking will reach someone in New York much faster than my Delhi neighborhood is something that everyone knows. It’s a given.”

And:

That model of success abroad translating into domestic distribution is a “fool’s paradise,” because audiences just aren’t interested, countered Shariq Patel, former chief executive of Zee Studios, a film production and distribution company. Three of his films were screened at dozens of festivals, but only “Joram” made it to the Indian box office and had no audience — “came out literally at zero,” he said.
“The Indian audience, the moment they see all those laurels, they say this would be too much of an intellectual film,” he said. “That is the country, whether we like it or not.”

Oh man, is that depressing!

The more things change in India, the more they stay the same.

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