NYFF: Dea Kulumbegashvili's "Beginning"
Wednesday, October 7, 2020 at 3:30PM by Jason Adams
If you throw a ball, or even better a stick of dynamite, straight up into the air there is a moment of pause, of tranquility, at its peak, before it comes tumbling down. The apogee, as its known, is a fascinating word to me, close as it is to apology -- in my mind I always picture the shrug of the cartoon Coyote as he begins his plummet. Apogee, but whoops here I come. Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili's Beginning, as stunning a debut film as any I've seen, lingers in the feeling of that pause -- the world feels suspended, we're light of breath and danger is nigh, but man the view is something.
The film begins and we meet Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili, staggeringly good) and her husband David (Rati Oneli) as they greet parishioners inside their sparse, fresh-smelling new Jehovah's Witness church, and immediately we notice two things. First that the film was filmed in the squarish frame ratio that's become shorthand for art-minded movie-makers looking to quick express claustrophobia -- think First Reformed or The Lighthouse; right away we know that these are people who are stifled by their surroundings...