The Women Who Bring Men Back to Life – On All We Imagine as Light
- analasic
- Aug 11
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 13
“You have to believe in the illusion, or you’ll lose your mind.”
In the sea of Western feminist films that often openly and combatively defend the female position, last year’s Cannes Grand Prix, directed by Payal Kapadia, arrives as something quieter, gentler — and perhaps deeper.
Three nurses live in Mumbai, a city whose constant, pulsating rhythm carries everything forward yet cares for no one.
One waits for a husband who may never return.
Another hides her love for a man of a different faith.
The third, a widow, already distant from her son, now loses her home and must return to her village.
Their days are filled with bodies they heal and lives they touch. Yet their own longings remain suspended — caught between the city’s shimmering illusions and the weight of tradition.
Thematic layer
Critics speak of drama, isolation, freedom, and tender friendship.But beneath these words lies a sharper question:
What does it mean to be a woman in a world of arrogant builders and absent or fearful men?
These women are neither lonely by choice nor because of some psychological wound we might expect in drama — they are shaped by a world in which the bond between man and woman is no longer sacred.
Filled with yearning, they seek intimacy, family, meaning. On an unconscious level, they need to transcend the narrow role of Caregiver and embrace that of Lover and creator.
The problem is not personal — it is societal.
For only in a world where the free recognition between two people is possible can the sacred magic be born — the magic that heals, revives the dead, and opens space for integration and wonders.
Main archetypal axis: Lover --> Caregiver, subplot axis: Explorer --> Magician
Small fragments of the plot illuminate one of the film’s most important undercurrents: pregnancy as a longing the audience must keep in mind. And yet here, pregnancy is not a romantic ideal but an obligation, a burden — or perhaps, in its absence, an unacknowledged void.
Dreams smoulder quietly; the emptiness grows.
When two roommates bring a cat to the hospital for an ultrasound and see four tiny hearts beating, the question becomes inevitable:Will they themselves ever bring life into the world — freely, not out of duty?
Can they step beyond the frame where a man is dogma, destiny, or illusion, and find a love in which creation itself is an act of freedom? Where love is not a trap, but a force that sustains life?
Another genre axis that takes off in the second half of the film is Explorer → Magician. And even though we often think of this pair in terms of science fiction, here a few truly magical moments occur — and the film ends as a parable.
In its final movement, the story shifts from the constraints of the city to the openness of the sea.When they finally set out — far from the city’s noise and the laws of expectation — their silence becomes fertile.
In it lies the power to see their dreams, to awaken them, and to live them.
Everything we imagine, we can experience as light. Everything we experience as light is the light within us.
Stories may shift their setting and style, but the archetypal axis remains — the invisible thread pulling us toward the heart of human experience — and back into the light, time and again.
Have a film you’d like me to explore through this lens? Leave a comment below, or share which stories have stayed with you lately. Your suggestions might inspire the next post.
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