2020 ‘დასაწყისი’ Directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili
In a sleepy provincial town, a Jehovah Witness community is attacked by an extremist group. In the midst of this conflict, the familiar world of Yana, the wife of the community leader, slowly crumbles. Yana’s inner discontent grows as she struggles to make sense of her desires.
Sergey Borsuk Giorgi Chubinidze Aleksandre Khuntsaria Bejan Laliashvili Gela Natsvishvili Niko Tarielashvili
Akaki Ghughunishvili Georgiy Gongadze Shota Gugunishvili David Khubua Levan Meparidze Giorgi Ustarashvili
Au commencement, Dasatskisi, Dasatskisi (Beginning), Začátek, 비기닝, Początek, Начало, Başlangıç, Початок, 开始
Canada
Toronto International Film Festival
USA
New York Film Festival
South Korea
Ukraine
Australia
Melbourne International Film Festival
Spain16
Czechia
UK18
Spain
Spain
Australia
Canada
Czechia
South Korea
Spain
UK
USA
Ukraine
In a modern world that wants to think of itself in widescreen, the squarish 1:33 aspect ratio and the similarly claustrophobic “Academy ratio” have been somewhat ostracized as outliers — relegated to the province of arthouse filmmakers who primarily use them to express confinement of some kind (“Fish Tank,” “First Reformed,” and “Mommy” represent just a small handful of recent examples). Dea Kulumbegashvili’s luminously powerful “Beginning” was shot in 1:33 to much the same effect, but this auspicious debut has a more violent and involved relationship with its framing than most of its contemporaries.
From the horrifying sting of its first shot to the becalming ethereality of its longest take, Kulumbegashvili’s film doesn’t simply trap its heroine in a home…
The differences of psychological terrorism and how they are dealt with. One intrudes upon the masculine sacred and in response the community bands together, seeks answers but more importantly justice for this crime. The other intrudes upon the feminine material yet she is treated as the one profane. Evidence is so easily malleable, manipulate-able to give those in power the answers they already wanted to hear, and it is less justice for criminal acts than it is simply waiting to be acted upon so that preconceived judgements are finally doled. It is a life of reading scripts where going off is culpable, even when caused by outside actors. There was never any freedom under prescribed predestination, her status after death worth more than her well-being in life.
i absolutely REFUSE to believe that this is a debut feature?? HOW??? from the very first scene i was utterly hypnotised... i can’t even put into words how in absolute awe i am at the direction on display here, every single scene is so beautifully crafted and i found myself truly fascinated by how each shot was framed! this film craves us to seek out and question the reasons behind what we are seeing, from what we are/aren’t shown to how long we are left to linger within each moment. these moments are presented in a way that force us to think on how we feel about the images exhibited and to me that's what cinema is all about. watching this film is certainly a meditative experience, yet unmistakably a deeply haunting one too. it's a film that i definitely won’t be forgetting any time soon.
NYFF 2020: film #20
“it’s as if i were waiting for something to start, or to end”
this is the kind of film that would have made me sigh in a normal festival atmosphere when it ended, leaving the theater and having not much to say about it while my friends and i grab a bite to eat and get ready for our next movie. deftly made to be sure, but so heavy in a way that doesn’t feel fully worth it as well. i’ll have to think on this one
Es difícil hablar de Beginning. Difícil porque es, efectivamente, una grandísima película. Difícil porque, a pesar de eso, he odiado este visionado, uno de los más frustrantes que recuerdo.
¿Dónde se pone el límite a un plano? ¿Cuándo es demasiado largo, y cuándo es suficientemente largo pero demasiado vacío? ¿Cuándo tengo yo, como espectador, la capacidad de pensar que un plano es demasiado largo?
Creo que esta película es demasiado larga. En sus partes y en su conjunto. Creo que es críptica, que no me ha costado entrar pero que me ha costado menos salir. Que me habría resultado facilísimo dejarme llevar y dormirme durante la mitad del metraje. Porque el ritmo de Beginning es frustrante, frustrante hasta decir basta,…
Strongly relate to the girl who, when asked what heaven is, replies "a coffin."
Beginning extrudes such extraordinary confidence that it's remarkable to comprehend that it's the debut feature from Georgian director Déa Kulumbegashvili. The drama commences unfolding in a quiet and insulated Georgian village where the more significant number of its residents are generally Christian Orthodox; evolving into being a narrative overwhelmed with apprehensions, reflections and poetry. It involves an extremist group burning down a Jehovah's Witnesses' church that ignites the life of Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili), the wife of the community leader David (Rati Oneli), into commencing spiralling out of control.
Kulumbegashvili does incredible work communicating what her central character is feeling by the shrewd staging of her scenes: Yana becomes sidelined in the frame or becomes placed meaningfully off-camera altogether, and the…
Long, static shots dominate Beginning, a film clearly influenced by various arthouse auteurs who embrace super slow cinema. The high contrast images seem destined to burn into your brain, as the shots linger artfully, even if only to expose raw human darkness in many moments. Beginning is set amongst landscapes of pain, opening with a burning Kingdom Hall and then becoming more wrapped around just one individual. Her crisis is a mixture of internal suffering and social oppression. The masculinity around her cannot understand nor comprehend her pain. Nobody is interested in justice and her sex life is used to shame and disempower her. She exists uncomfortably, as Beginning unfolds as a test of faith within a dark world. Things…
I wish I had turned this off. Lots of boring static shots that made me sad to be wasting my time on this!
Strikingly composed and rehearsed: it has to be, given the nature of some of those atrocities. Yet like a lot of films by young filmmakers who've seen a lot of films (and a lot of the New Extreme Cinema, in particular), it appears, scene by scene, utterly removed from life as it's actually experienced by real, non-movie, flesh-and-blood people; from first frame to last, we're watching terrible things happening to crash-test-dummy characters in one of those rigorously self-sealed art-movie vacuums.
80/100
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Confinement comes in different shapes and different senses. But most frustrating one is where you see as you are free practically but you feel as you are confined. U may can not find any iron bars around yourself as they are all invisible but don't dare to think that u are free..at the very moment when u take a step or two to leave all shackles of yours in order to achieve freedom then those bars appear outta nowhere! And in order to establish that sense of claustrophobia of being frustrated in such confinement, I don't think there is any better option than using 1:33 or Academic ratio for shooting a film. Dea Kulumbegashvili as a debutant director…
Dea Kulumbegashvili’s assured, provocative debut absolutely floored me. It’s a claustrophobic, slow burn tale of faith and womanhood that is reminiscent of the best from Haneke. Every shot is so carefully composed, with gorgeous lingering moments and an intricate soundscape that key into the despair of this harrowing narrative. Dea is a special new voice in Georgian cinema and I’m excited to see what the future of her and other Georgian filmmakers hold.
