Everything is Cinema Review (2021)

Everything Is Cinema By Don Palathara works supremely well as a breakdown of an already broken marriage of a couple, Chris and Anita, the latter an actress and the former a filmmaker who has come to make a documentary as a continuation of Louis Malle’s documentary Calcutta. But soon the lockdown hits and when faced with boredom, he decides to film his wife discreetly and in a David Holtzman’s Diary style, records his thoughts and feelings about their current state.

The reason I said it works well a marriage story is because having seen Malle’s film Calcutta, would provide a certain advantage to the viewer in terms of what the film does. Watching Baradwaj Rangan’s review, I learnt that many shots in EIC is similar to Calcutta by Malle and both show “poverty porn” i.e. exclusively poor struggling people.

The film is filmed as if we are watching Chris’s own film about his wife which is filled with cuts, edits and even a black screen as a reward for us bearing “Anita’s face”. The film though is quite simple in its own ambitions and interest, though shot terrifically well. The constant hand held give it a great feel gelling well with how Chris stages the shot awkwardly give it a great sense of a documentary.

Chris talks and believes as if he is an intellectual individual who is extremely upper class in taste and refinement but his own wife is apparently fake as she is more positive and enjoys with people than him.

When I finished the film, I was left with the question of why Chris was such an arrogant obnoxious guy. Baradwaj Rangan said that it was the effect of lockdown which makes living with people we love very difficult, but throughout the film, Chris’s behaviour makes us feel he has always remained the same.

He disrespects Anita to the extent that we don’t even see her fully crying after a scene of implied domestic abuse. He cuts away to pigeons and nature and denies her even the space to cry.

But apart from these well done interior sequences, Everything is Cinema is content to be the simplistic look into the marriage of an arrogant “intellectual”. And though its done well, that’s all.