Though “All We Think about as Mild” was not chosen by India as its nominee for Finest Worldwide Function Movie, the indie from India has damaged by means of to seek out acclaim and an arthouse viewers right here within the U.S. The contributors to Movie Remark not too long ago named it because the Finest Movie of 2024, whereas IndieWire’s survey of 177 critics had the movie at quantity 4 on its listing. And, on Sunday evening, director Payal Kapadia was nominated for Finest Director on the Golden Globes, alongside the administrators of Oscar favorites like “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “Conclave,” “Emilia Pérez,” and “The Substance.”
The story of the lives of two nurses residing in Mumbai is crammed with quiet, intimate vignettes of the on a regular basis life in Mumbai, however additionally it is brimming with thrilling cinematic poetry that brings to life their emotional lives. Whereas Kapadia was on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, the director broke down how she used the digital camera, sound, modifying, coloration, and light-weight to show her characters’ atypical lives into a unprecedented piece of filmmaking.
A Metropolis Symphony of Voices
Earlier than we meet Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha), Kapadia introduces us to their metropolis. Within the movie’s opening sequence, we see glimpses of Mumbai in flux and transit — a pre-dawn market being damaged down, commuters on the practice to work — whereas listening to snippets of voices of atypical individuals who dwell within the metropolis. The opening sequence is the right preface to assembly Prabha — on the finish of it, the digital camera lingers on the protagonist, who’s introduced as simply one other of the hundreds of commuters — however additionally it is a window into the director’s creative course of and use of type.
Whereas writing the script for “All We Think about as Mild,” Kapadia and cinematographer Ranabir Das (the director’s accomplice in life and filmmaking) interviewed folks about their lives in Mumbai. What started as a method of gathering supply materials and inspiration for her script advanced into one thing extra.
“We felt like someplace we wished to recollect these voices that we had met, so we did it once more with extra purposefulness,” defined Kapadia, who re-conducted the interviews, now not utilizing rudimentary telephone recordings. The director had been impressed by István Szabó’s 1977 movie about Budapest, “Metropolis Map.” “It’s a beautiful little movie that makes use of voices on this method, you by no means see the folks, however you simply hear these very intimate, very transferring voices, and I wished to do this for Mumbai as effectively,” she mentioned. “We wished to do a documentary sequence to start with, and we felt that it was like a metropolis symphony the place there are numerous, many voices.”
Whereas Kapadia’s first characteristic “A Evening of Realizing Nothing” was a “documentary,” “All We Think about as Mild,” she nonetheless views her first scripted characteristic movie as a continuation of her apply. “I like very a lot this juxtaposition [of fiction and nonfiction filmmaking],” mentioned Kapadia. “I really feel that when the nonfiction and fiction sit collectively, it makes the fiction, for me, extra sensible, and it has this high quality of maybe one other form of fact to it.”
Stolen Moments: The Freedom of Evening
The opening captures the director’s love/hate fascination together with her hometown, which is on the coronary heart of the movie’s story and use of type. In Mumbai, Kapadia defined, most are compelled to dwell removed from their work, and infrequently their family and friends as effectively. A lot of Prabha’s time is taken up by her job and commute.
“You don’t have any time for your self. You’re simply coming house, you simply have to make your meals and eat it and fall asleep, or wash your garments for the following day, many can’t get weekends off,” mentioned Kapadia, who deliberately shot the Mumbai part of the movie throughout monsoon season, so the viewers may visually really feel the burden of on a regular basis life within the metropolis. “Generally in Hindi motion pictures you have got these music sequences the place the monsoon is meant to be, oh, so beautiful — it rains and the lovers can run round … however the fact of the monsoon is that by the point it’s July it’s raining three to 4 days constantly, torrential rain, the streets get flooded, the trains cease, you get stranded someplace. It’s a fairly low-lying metropolis, so it’s actually tough to get to work.”
There may be additionally a terrific deal Kapadia loves about Mumbai. On a sensible stage, there’s work and it’s comparatively protected for ladies to get round in comparison with different components of India. There’s additionally an vitality and a way of a always altering metropolis (though, because the movie explores, not at all times for the very best). For each the filmmaker and her younger protagonist-in-love, this facet of metropolis, each narratively and cinematically, is greatest captured at evening — the one temporary a part of the day Anu can sneak out to fulfill together with her forbidden lover Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon).
“I’m very interested in the nights in Mumbai,” mentioned Kapadia. “I felt that the night was most likely when these two may truly meet and be a bit extra nameless and conceal in the dead of night corners of town.”
The wetness of town turns into electrical and blue below town lights at evening, the right backdrop for the younger lovers making an attempt to steal moments of privateness within the crowded metropolis. It’s an vitality that’s embodied in how these scenes have been shot.
As Kapadia defined on the podcast, movie manufacturing is pricey in Mumbai, and to skirt the necessity for permits and infrastructure required to “correctly” shoot the evening scenes, she and Das would exit with their small DSLR digital camera (that appears like a nonetheless images digital camera) to seek out the compositions at exterior areas that may be pleasant to the naked bones crew, and return with their forged at evening.
Temporal Storytelling
The vitality of town can be captured in how Kapadia and editor Clément Pinteaux lower the movie, which was a part of how the director wished to construction the movie’s presentation of time.
“I had this concept that I wished to play with temporality, which is one thing that in cinema is such a pleasure to do,” mentioned Kapadia. “And I felt that point, the sense of time may add to these layers within the script, and so the primary half is admittedly fast, but additionally as a result of in cities and the lives that these ladies lead, there’s no time to dream about your self and suppose, ‘Oh, woe is me.’”
This primary part of the movie takes place over many days, however when the movie shifts to the coastal Ratnagiri area — as Prabha and Anu make the journey to assist their colleague Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) transfer again house after shedding her condo — there’s a vital shift.
“I wished the second half to be only one very lengthy day, and to really feel time actually slowed down, virtually as if we attain a type of timelessness, which you’re feeling in goals,” mentioned Kapadia.
The Colour, Mild, and Sound of Goals
This shift will not be solely formally marked with longer pictures and fewer edits, Kapadia reached for a definite visible and aural presentation as effectively. Kapadia paused manufacturing after capturing the primary half of the movie in Mumbai — partly as a result of she wished to embrace the strategy taken on her documentaries, the place taking time to edit can higher inform what and the way she shot the remainder of the film — but additionally to attend out monsoon season, and provides the extra dream-like second half a special gentle and coloration palette.
“The colours of the monsoon are extra blue and grey, and the colours of Ratnagiri [after the monsoons] are extra purple and yellow — purple as a result of the soil is purple, form of terracotta coloration,” mentioned Kapadia. “We wished the solar to be felt, as a result of within the first half you don’t really feel any direct daylight in any respect, however within the second half to have a lot solar that generally pictures are even bleached out and also you fully lose particulars. We felt that we may play with this sense of a dreamlike state with the daylight.”
Kapadia additionally reached for a extra dreamlike soundscape within the Ratnagiri part. She drew inspiration from how Federico Fellini used sound. That is greatest on show within the movie’s dramatic climax wherein a person is saved from drowning. Whereas being a particularly dramatic scene, it lasts for nearly ten minutes, and there’s a way time is being prolonged — the precise reverse of what you’d anticipate from the action-packed second.
“I actually wish to work on this method of sound the place you’re feeling that one thing is objectively actual and also you’re listening to very actual sounds, after which these very sounds turn out to be as in the event that they’re coming from inside someplace. I felt that going from this exterior world into Prabha’s inside thoughts area, sound may play an attention-grabbing position,” mentioned Kapadia of the drowning scene. “I used to be very excited about how Fellini does this, particularly in ‘8 1/2,’ the place abruptly it goes into these dream sequences with only a mild monitor, and the sound of the wind and the sunshine altering. I’m mesmerized by the way it’s virtually theatrical, however with extra emphasis on sound.”
To listen to Kapadia’s full Toolkit interview, subscribe to the Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favourite podcast platform. You may as well watch the total interview under, or subscribe to IndieWire’s YouTube web page.
