All We Imagine as Light (2024)

Färgen blå. I så gott som varje scen i utsökta All We Imagine as Light finns den där, drar blicken till sig. Det blå är överallt. I karaktärernas kläder. På väggar. I ljus som faller. I skuggorna. Det blå är lika framträdande som i Kieslowskis Blå. Det här är en bättre film, den blåa färgen nitas inte fast vid en betydelse. 

Payal Kapadia (regi & manus) har gjort en storartad film som låter allt ta tid. De tre huvudpersonerna bor i Mumbai och gemensamt för dem är att de känner att de inte helt hör hemma i den hektiska storstaden. Till saken hör att de alla är inflyttade. Anu (Divya Prabha) har blivit kär i en muslimsk man och är rädd för att andra ska döma henne. Och familjen (i Kerala) bombarderar henne med meddelanden om män som hon kunde gifta sig med. Anu delar lägenhet med Prabha (Kani Kusruti) och ibland är det den senare som får betala hela hyran. De jobbar båda på sjukhus. Där Anu är djärv är Prabha i början av filmen nästan kärv. En omständighet är att hennes man åkte till Tyskland för att jobba genast när de hade gift sig och hon har inte hört av honom på en massa år. Så en dag får hon en riskokare. En röd riskokare, "made in Germany". Det är som ett tecken, men på vad? Samtidigt uppvaktas Prabha av en läkare på sjukhuset som verkar känna sig lika utanför i Mumbai som hon, också han inflyttad och sinsemellan snackar de malayam (talas framför allt i Kerala, lär jag mig).

Anus och Prabhas kompis Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), som är lite äldre än dem, bor i ett hus som ska rivas, nytt och dyrt ska komma i dess ställe. Hon kan inte ens bevisa att hon bott där, för dokumenten hon visas anses inte giltiga. Det är som om hennes hela existensberättigande ifrågasätts, så upplever hon det. 

I grunden finns något slags livskänsla. Den bottnar framför allt i vänskapen mellan kvinnorna (inte utan friktion) som skildras särskilt fint i slutet av filmen.

All We Imagine as Light är en politisk film om kapitalism, migration och islamofobi i Indien. Samtidigt kretsar den kring komplexa livslägen, drömmar, sorg. Kapadia låter filmen börja som ett slags dokumentär och sluta i ett närmast drömlikt tillstånd. Jag kan inte nog betona hur fint genomfört det är. Film som inte räds komplexitet. Scenerna slår mig som utforskande, både konstnärligt (med en kamera som plötsligt kan befinna sig ute i det blå) och på ett idéplan. I bästa mening moget filmskapande. Och mitt i allt också humor som blixtrar till, som när vi får se Parvaty slå sönder en reklamskylt för byggbolaget som ska göra mos av hennes hus. Och så den blåa färgen som är som ett enda långt andetag i en storstad när det regnar. 

The Fall (2006)

Tarsem Singh made the colorful and imaginative but rather hollow The Cell. The style is instantaneously recognizable in The Fall. If you like films by Terry Gillian or perhaps Tim Burton, or films like Pan's Labyrinth, this is for you. If not - well.
Speaking for myself, I was strangely entertained by this film - I found myself sucked into its nonsensical world. The story is, on the face of it, very simple, like a fairy tale. A girl is hospitalized after having broken her arm. The setting: Los Angeles in the 1920's. She starts to talk to a stunt man. He tells her a story. The film shifts between the gritty reality of the hospital and the lush images of the stuntman's story.
It must be said that the audacious aesthetic of The Fall is rooted in music videos and commercials. It is a film of wild imagination of the sort that does not touch you deeply. Pan's labyrinth, with its story about children and war, is on another level in this sense, I think. However, I don't think The Fall is cheaply calculated - it is far too wild and crazy for that, its exercises in shared imagination (the girl and the stuntman's) too bold and winding.
So perhaps: the romantic, sweeping panoramas that Tarsem Sing conjures up don't really, for all their stunning effects and visual play, speak to me.
The Fall is also a very romantic elevation of the force of cinema. Not only does the silent movie stunt man become a romantic hero - the visual fantasy testaments to the limitlessness of movie-making (or at least I think that is Tarsem's own idea).

Adi Shankaracharya (1983)

Given that I don't know a lot about Hinduism, there were many things that didn't make sense to me in Adi Shankarachary (G. V Iyer) - a film about Sri Shankara, a philosopher and reformer (the film is said to be the only film ever made in Sanskrit!). Using explaining intertitles, repetition and contemplative images of nature, Iyer strives to put Sri Shankara both in a historical setting and a spiritual context. This character of the film is both challenging and interesting to watch, even though I, admittedly, got a bit tired of the style towards the end. Shankara criticized many aspects of the religious expressions in his contemporaries: he attacked the sacrifice of animals and he rejected the cast system. On the other hand, Shankara is presented as an exegetic reader of the holy sources, where there seems to be a strict order in who can comment and how the comments are delivered. Discussion and debate was emphasized but regrettably the film never really explored how these discussions were carried out - this is something I missed. Even though the film's attention to myth and storytelling was spellbinding at times, there was many things about the film language I didn't feel comfortable with - what probably was intended to look awe-inspiring started to seem pompous to me. The same goes for the way the lines were structured around religious discourse. Maybe the thing to say here is that I am so utterly unfamiliar with certain religious notions of knowledge/the I/the soul that I weren't able to make much of these spiritual conversations shown on the screen.

Pather panchali (1955) & Aparajito (1956)

My knowledge about and experience about Indian cinema is embarrassingly small. Satyajit Ray's Apu-trilogi are films I have wanted to see and after having seen the first two, I can only conclude that their place in film history are justified. The two first films can be situated in the tradition of neorealism but they also feel strangely modern - I sometimes think about directors and films made in the sixties.

Pather panchali is set in Bengal in the twenties. It follows the ordeals of a poor family. The father is a brahmin, a sort of a happy-go-lucky type, whose income is on the meager side. Circumstances makes him go to the city and look for a job. The mother runs the household while taking a hostile attitude towards an elderly lady (it's unclear whether they are related) who is supported by them. This old lady is a magnificent actor and just watching her is one of the reasons to watch the film. The two kids lead the life of childhood: they play, steal fruit and eagerly follow the doings of the candy man. One day, they walk to the faraway place when they can spot a train on the other side of a gigantic field (this scene, as many others, is exquisitely shot!). The film takes a darker turn as it depicts the family's poverty and the death of the daughter. Aparajito chronicles what happens in the following years. The family has moved to the city. After a spell of illness, the father dies. A relative offers a place for the rest of the family in a village. Apu turns out to be a scholarly boy, and he goes to Calcutta to study.

The main thread of Aparajito is the choices Apu has to make: is he to stay with his lonely mother or should he pursue his studies? This leads the film to explore modern life and the conflicts born out of a new historical situation. Ray refrains from moralizing. He presents the struggles in an open way - open doesn't mean neutral, because these films are engaging and impassioned, but Ray never presents either modernity or the traditional life in terms of negative and positive. And: he doesn't conjure up anything as "emblematic" for modern life. He just shows situations of ordinary life and the choices people make. One of the major themes in the first two movies, poverty, is dealt with with a sort of matter-of-fact approach - this, however, not at all implying that feelings are absent. Especially in the first film, two different attitudes are contrasted: the mother is practical, economical - and she turns bitter. The father worries less. He is idealistic, even though he also acknowledges economic necessities.

The first films explore human relations very insightfully. This especially concerns the relation between the mother and the aunt - a relation characterized by dependence and ressentiment. We see the mother's anger, and the old woman's amazement. Another theme brought up in both films to great effect is loneliness. The film presents no solution and no gratifying reassertions, but presents a situation in a clear-sighted way: a boy who does not know how he is to react to his mother feeling lonely (the film shows the oscillation between well-meaning intentions and youthful lack of sensitivity) and a mother who is at pains to handle the fact that the boy is growing up and living in a distant place and living a life she knows very little about.

One aspect of the films I also liked was the music. Ray cleverly uses both non-diegetic music and sounds in the environment. None feels calculated.