There is a moment early on in Payal Kapadia ‘s “ All We Imagine as Light ” — her second feature after 2021’s lyrical hybrid doc “A Night of Knowing Nothing” — that exemplifies this gently corsucating movie’s peculiar beauty. Prabha (Kani Kusrati) a hardworking nurse with tired eyes rides the commuter train home at the end of another long day, gazing out at the glimmering blur of the city. Her life is anything but a fairground and yet, clinging to a pole to steady herself with the rushing night air stirring her hair, she could almost be riding a carousel.
Just two features into her young career, Kapadia has established her rare talent for finding passages of exquisite poetry within the banal blank verse of everyday Indian life. Prabha works in a slightly tatty local hospital, where she spends her days tending to even the most difficult cases with a conspiratorial compassion she rarely seems to extend to herself. There is a stiffness within her that softens when she is caring for others and trying to solve their problems, be it an elderly patient beset by hallucinations of her dead husband, or her best friend Parvati (Chhaya Kadam) a widow who is being cruelly forced out of her home by ruthless property developers.
Husbands have a tendency to be dead or absent here: Prabha’s own arranged marriage was still in its infancy when, some years ago, her man left for Germany to find work, trailing promises to send for her when he could. She hears from him less and l.