All We Imagine as Light

Kani Kusnuti

I found Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine as Light to be worthy of the plaudits lavished upon it. This fictional feature debut outlines the lives of three female workers at a Mumbai hospital. The film balances melodrama with realism, belying Ms. Kapadia background in documentary work.The main character is a sharp nurse of a certain age named Prabha (Kani Kusnuti). Prabha seems stressed and uptight and we soon learn why: her husband emigrated to Germany for work over a year ago and she has not heard from him in some time. Prabha shares a small flat with the younger woman named Anu. Anu (Diva Prabha) is more liberated in outlook than Prabha and is carrying on a hot romance with a young Muslim man named Shiaz. The third of the female trio is Parvathy (Chhaya Kadam), an older woman who Prabha attempts to aid when she faces eviction.

The other main character of the film is Mumbai in all its polyglot glory, gritty but bursting with pockets of sensual delight. Kapadia constantly repeats the motif  of his characters commuting to work in the crowded and bustling metropolis. Unlike most US medical shows, All We Imagine as Light does not hit us over the head with medical procedures or Noah Wylie barking at his minions. Kapadia stresses the little touches of humanity that enliven the work day. She even manages to inject some humor to leaven the melodrama. I enjoyed Prabha and Anu reviewing eligible bachelors on a dating app and won't soon forget Prabha instructing her younger charges on the proper way to dispose of a placenta. 

The film shifts locale for the final third. Parvathy decides she is through with Mumbai and returns to her native coastal village. Prabha and Anu help her move, though Anu is also motivated into taking this opportunity to have a hot, for Indian cinema, tryst with her lover. This sojourn gives the characters a way to face their past and future. Anu and Shiaz pledge to trumpet their love, no matter the consequences. Prabha, who earlier in the film slut shamed Anu for her lifestyle, moves towards acceptance of the lovers. In the film's only sequence that feels like a magically realistic misstep, Prabha briefly reunites with her husband in order to let him go. All in all, though, All We Imagine as Light was one of the better films released in 2024.

Beyond the Time Barrier

Darlene Tompkins and Robert Clarke

Edgar G. Ulmer's Beyond the Time Barrier is a black and white sci-fi cheapie released in 1960. It is bargain basement, but with more than a few reasons to recommend it to committed auteurists. The picture was part of a deal that Ulmer struck with star and producer Robert Clarke to film enough footage for two features in Texas in just two weeks. The other feature was entitled The Amazing Transparent Man and was also released in 1960. A disused air base and some futuristic looking exhibition buildings at the Texas State fairgrounds were the primary sets for ...Time Barrier. Ulmer's daughter has a major supporting role and his wife was the script editor. Script writer Arthur C. Pierce worked as an extra and a production assistant, so it was made with a sense of all hands on deck.

Clarke, a film industry veteran whose acting career peaked with his role in Ida Lupino's Outrage in 1950. had bitten off more than he could chew by writing, directing, producing, and starring in 1958's The Hideous Sun Demon. He and Ulmer had worked together on 1951's The Man from Planet X and had gotten along, so he was an obvious pick to alleviate Clarke's burden. Unfortunately, after shooting was completed, Clarke's financing fell apart and he had to sell the two film properties to American International Pictures. AIP shaped the film for their own purposes. They inserted into Beyond the Time Barrier a few clips, during the "mutant" section, from Journey to the Lost City, AIP's cut and paste version of Fritz Lang's two Indian epics. Beyond the Time Barrier feels padded, even at 74 minutes. It unspools like a 52 minute Twilight Zone episode that has been padded with exposition, lame fights, and characters moving deliberately from point a to point b.

If Mr. Pierce's script resembles a Twilight Zone episode, at least it resembles a good one, even with the requisite surprise ending. Clarke plays a test pilot who fulfills the title and flies into the future which we eventually learn is the year 2024. His old air base is unpopulated as is a nearby city. A futuristic metropolis, pictured with cheesy graphics, beckons and soon the pilot has been imprisoned by the new powers that be. The town is called The Citadel and is presided over by an elite coterie headed by the Supreme (Vladimir Sokoloff). Only the Supreme and his adjutant are capable of speech. Mankind has mutated into a devoluted form and is not only deaf and dumb, but also infertile. The more sickly mutants are imprisoned within a ghastly gulag. Only the Supreme's comely daughter, Trirene (Darlene Tompkins), holds within her the possibility of reproduction and she is quick to pin her hopes upon the pilot. The locals are chary with details, but we eventually learn that mankind was devastated by a plague from outer space, earth's protective atmospheric belts having been undermined by atomic testing.

Given that Sokoloff gets to play a Russian for once, he played Mexican in the same year's The Magnificent Seven, it is hard not to interpret the Supreme and his minions as stand-ins for our Cold War adversaries. Even so, Sokoloff's Supreme, a kindly uncle joe, is given moments of tender warmth with his daughter. Ulmer allows an equivocal portrait in line with his socialist humanism. I especially enjoyed a sequence featuring Ms. Tompkins primping before a mirror, both a smitten young girl and unobscure object of desire. I see lots of cheap AIP features, mostly biker and beach pictures, that I can't get through the whole way. Mostly cheap jive and shuck. I could sit through some of The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini just because it featured the Bobby Fuller Four, but that is a rare oasis in a desert of dada. Beyond the Time Barrier is equally slapdash, but has surprising sensitivity.

Eephus

         

Carson Lund's Eephus is a baseball movie in a minor key. Mr. Lund, whose previous claim to fame in the film world was being cinematographer on a number of Tyler Taormina films, has crafted a premier flick that stands as a elegiac ode to the sport. The film covers the course of a single game between two New Hampshire recreation league teams. Autumn is creeping in, literally and figuratively, as their beloved playing field is due to be bulldozed for a new school. That is the plot. Lund offers us no melodramatic flourishes or surprising twists. No breakdowns or marriage meltdowns. Just character sketches and the ballet of the game. In this case, a sloppy and shambolic ballet.That is for the best since most of Mr. Lund's cast are non-actors and include Boston Red Sox near great Bill "Spaceman" Lee, Sox announcer Joe Castiglione, documentarian Frederick Wiseman, and fashion designer Wayne Diamond. Results vary as does the comic timing. The most soulful performance is by Keith William Richards as an aging hurler pulled of the mound by his niece's christening.

Mr. Lee explains and demonstrates the eephus pitch, a slow bloopy curve not often seen at the major league level. It is this attention to the niggling details of the game that appeals to a baseball nut like me, though I wonder if it will hinder the film's worldwide appeal. Eephus' charms lie primarily in visual composition. Lund has an eye that is as exact and compelling as Edward Hopper. I also enjoyed the aural clutter and fake advertisements Lund employs, most emanating from a throwback boombox. The lack of cutting edge technology and the gorgeous autumnal New England foliage is appropriate to a game that is in the midst of a slow decline; as is cinema. The ascendancy of baseball can be traced by the rise of Babe Ruth and the decline of Mickey Mantle. When I listen to sports radio, chatter about the sport ranks a poor third below football and basketball. The presence of Mr. Wiseman is key here because I believe Mr. Lund wanted to document a game and a small town ritual before it disappears.