The Mystery of Cinematic Form

and some thoughts on All We Imagine as Light

Netflix execs are reportedly asking screenwriters to make characters “announce what they’re doing” to cater to viewers who treat shows as background wallpaper. As if that wasn’t enough, they’ve also created thousands of micro-genres, including one called “casual viewing,” specifically designed for content you can successfully ignore.

In this era of hyper-optimized, “what’s next” filmmaking, there’s a strange kind of paralysis in trying to describe a piece of work that refuses to fit the Hollywood-style tight plot or the Netflix formula of sweet anxiety wrapped in bingeable episodes. It’s almost like the idea of paying attention has become revolutionary.

In such genre of films/TV, the viewer is in control, where everything is designed for him, and the viewer too feels entitled to pleasure in the form that all he imagined. After all, he has paid the money and now wants to be taken on the ride. It’s like the massage chairs at the airport where you pay a certain amount and expect specific body points to be pressed for relaxation and something called ‘tranquillity’ (which I never knew what it meant).

But the films that doesn’t follow this route are described as “poetic,” “lyrical,” or “a painting in motion.” What do they even mean? Poetry can be Bukowski’s street vlog style poetry or Blake’s ethereal visions. “Lyrical” could be the wistfulness of “Ek Akela Is Sheher Mein” or the mad energy of “Ay Ganpat Chal Daaru La.” And paintings can be Dalí’s mad surrealism or Edward Hopper’s portraits of loneliness. Not all paintings are serene like Impressionist landscapes. Paintings can be disjointed, chaotic, or even unsettling.

This is the limitation of language. The experience of watching a film—a deeply visual and experiential medium—doesn’t translate neatly into words.

But that’s not a flaw. If anything, the difficulty in describing what a film like this makes you feel is part of its magic. Good art leaves you grasping for words, and that inarticulateness—that inability to fully express what it does to you—is part of the appeal of a cinematic experience. Filmmaker Tarkovsky once said: “A true film touches something primal in the viewer, something they cannot articulate, but they know instinctively is there.”

The political aspect in films is now fairly easy to decode for us. After all, if not WhatsApp University, then we are now at least the graduates of the highly charged political atmosphere of Twitter (now known as X) University.

What I find more mysterious is the cinematic form, which I feel often gets ignored in how we talk about cinema. At its core, cinema is personal—political, of course—but it’s the form that creates its lingering magic: those haunting images, silences, rhythms, and textures we can never quite shake off.

Payal’s film begins with a shot of Mumbai, but it doesn’t deliver the usual cliches of the city—the chaos, the noise, the relentless energy. Instead, Mumbai emerges as something dreamlike, a space caught between memory and reality. It’s as though the city has been internalized by the filmmaker, who knows its rhythms so well that the usual loudness fades into the background. For an outsider, Mumbai’s details might appear amplified—vivid and overwhelming. But for someone who lives there, these same elements become part of the everyday, slipping into a kind of unnoticed numbness. The sound design and music (featuring the Ethiopian nun Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou) enhance this feeling, drawing one into a dazed kind of nostalgia and a hypnotic ennui.

Every artist has their own way of seeing cities; their relationship to space and the environment around them makes each gaze unique. This is how there can be unlimited stories can emerge from same subject and setting. I remember Jim Jarmusch’s quote: There are a limited number of stories to tell. But there is an unlimited number of ways to tell those same stories. I am more interested in forms.

I find it interesting how Payal’s film is rooted in a real space, yet doesn’t confine itself to realism in form. Realism in art—particularly in painting—has often been among the less favored movements, and for good reason. It tends to focus on surface-level truth, missing the deeper, transcendental qualities that art can offer. In India, we often equate realism with truth, treating it as the ultimate benchmark of cinema. But the power of cinema also not just showing the reality but also its unique ability to transcend reality. What sets a great film apart from a news report or a TV segment is this otherworldly quality—its ability to stir emotions and evoke feelings in the subconscious the viewer didn’t even know were there.

In the opening scenes of the film, there’s a moment that hints at the coming rain in Mumbai. Buildings are cloaked in clouds, and a woman frantically gathers clothes drying on the rooftop. Ranabir Das, the cinematographer, brings a visual style to these moments, capturing details that evoke a strange familiarity, almost like fragments of a lost era.

The detachment and loneliness of Mumbai is a theme etched in countless literature, lyrics, and films throughout the history of cinema. Interesting films often finds ways to externalize a character’s inner world through outside imagery. In fact, a few weeks back, I revisited La Notte by one of my favorite directors, Michelangelo Antonioni. In one scene, a character’s inner turmoil is expressed through her solitary walk through the city. The images she encounters—a frail old woman, phallic symbols, grotesque street fights—combine to form a landscape of her interior world where some kind of storm is brewing. In that sense, a filmmaker also leaves cues for the viewer to find the treasure—both in the film and within themselves. It asks a lot from the viewer too—a shared labor, a mutual effort to reach somewhere together.

This is the technique of classic cinema, and that’s where AWIAL succeeds. There is a scene that is very striking. The film’s protagonist, Prabha, played effortlessly by Kani Kusruti, carries a quiet, old-school loneliness that lingers in every frame. Kapadia sharpens this feeling with a simple yet striking object—a shiny rice cooker. It arrives one evening, sent by Prabha’s long-absent husband, who’s likely moved to Germany with no plans of returning. They’re no longer in touch, but the cooker, oddly enough, becomes an object of warmth for that lost connection. In one poignant moment, Prabha hugs it tightly—a gesture that says everything about longing, hope, and the emptiness of waiting.

It brought to mind Tsai Ming-liang’s What Time Is It There?—a film where a street vendor in Taipei, mourning his father’s death, sells his personal watch to a woman about to leave for Paris. After she departs, he becomes fixated on time, resetting all the clocks in Taipei to Paris time. It’s a deceptively simple yet profound metaphor for longing—a way to close the distance with someone who is no longer there. It’s a coping mechanism that defies logic but resonates deeply in its humanity. Loneliness, after all, has no clear remedy, and Tsai’s intervention feels like an attempt to grapple with the universal absurdity of longing.

Cinema, in that sense, is perhaps not always about grandness but also about quietness. Not always about sensory overload, but about discovering the empty spaces. Not always about asserting power, but about embracing powerlessness in an emotionally overwhelming world.

I liked that Payal’s film feels muted, understated. This is a film that isn’t too desperate to prove anything and is content in its own space. The frames aren’t designed to scream for your attention, nor do they chase the idea of “perfect shots”—a habit that’s hard to unlearn after passing out of film school. Even the sound design is careful, deliberate. It doesn’t shout or guilt-trip the viewer into not noticing its details; it simply exists, blending into the narrative.

In the world of capital letters, this film is in italics.

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