Bayou Drama and Georgian Drama, Now Available to Stream This weekâs recommended titles are
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Iâm hoping you had a nice Valentineâs Day, or whatever your personal commemoration of choice is for the day before all the candy goes 50 percent off. This weekâs films are not particularly romantic, nor are they useful as aesthetic litmus tests for potential amours (unless youâre particularly hardcore when it comes to your cinema â in which case, respect). But these are films that dig deep into human experience and do not play around when it comes to big, complicated emotions. I hope youâre getting by, and that youâre cared for. I hope the state makes sure everyone gets a COVID vaccination instead of a gun, as the latter is apparently their priority right now. And I hope your candy of preference is in the post-holiday discount section, because itâs the little treats that keep us on
Beginning (2020) | Mubi
Cinephiles would do well to store the name of the director of
Beginning in their memory banks. Dea Kulumbegashvili, a 30-something Georgian filmmaker, has crafted one of the most hauntingly beautiful first features since Werner Herzog’s
Signs of Life back in 1968.
A real love for the medium irradiates Kulumbegashvili’s debut, which tackles complex themes and concerns a conflicted couple isolated from society as well as themselves. Utilising a minimalist aesthetic comprising lengthy single takes (a characteristic largely absent from movies nowadays), the script, co-written by Kulumbegashvili and producer and lead actor Rati Oneli, is a bold departure from established storytelling norms. The 130-minute film is being streamed on Mubi.
Yana, played by Ia Sukhitashvili, is the spirit of “Beginning.” (Photo courtesy of MUBI.)
Content warning: The film and this review depict instances, sometimes very graphic, of verbal and sexual assault, including gender-based violence.
This review contains spoilers.
The circuitous nature of life in “Beginning” arrests its viewer and its protagonist in a boxed film format, rendering both to the limits it allows. What follows is a wrenching devolution of faith, trust and a woman’s very being; the beginning to an end.
Director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s feature debut centers on a rural Georgian town just outside of Tbilisi, where Jehovah’s Witnesses come together in a small white church within the confines of a majority Orthodox Christian population and neighborhood.
In the beginning of “Beginning” is the Word: a well-known Bible story, retold and unpacked during an afternoon meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses. “What is the moral of this story?” asks the minister, David (Rati Oneli), before later adding, “How should a true Christi
In the beginning of “Beginning” is the Word: a well-known Bible story, retold and unpacked during an afternoon meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses. “What is the moral of this story?” asks the minister, David (Rati Oneli), before later adding, “How should a true Christian behave in everyday life?” No answer is immediately forthcoming: Without warning, a Molotov cocktail is hurled into the crowded Kingdom Hall, igniting a tableau of fiery (and, it seems, not unprecedented) chaos. Images of destruction and screams of horror aside, the congregants escape as quickly as possible, and a hushed, eerie calm descends on the scenes that follow. For this religious community, you suspect, even violent persecution has become just one more of life’s soul-crushing rituals.