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| Director Aleksandre Koberidze |
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| Koberidze with New York Film Festival moderator Dennis Lim |
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| Koberidze with cinematographer Faraz Fesharaki (in cap) |
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| Actor Giorgi Bochorishvili shooting in Kutaisi |
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| cinematographer Faraz Fesharaki |
WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SKY? (Ras vkhedavt, rodesac cas vukurebt?) A- Georgia Germany (150 mi) 2021 d: Aleksandre Koberidze
“These morons have never seen a raven,” Guia A. thought, “but you couldn’t notice anything on his face.” —Rezo Cheishvili, Georgian writer from Kutaisi
Set in a timeless, technology-free present, this is the kind of movie that needs to be seen in theaters, yet most, unfortunately, will probably view this virtually. Shot before the pandemic, yet released during the Covid outbreak, it has a strange and fascinating way of holding our attention during the unusually long run time, as it’s largely a visual and aural tone poem, a love letter to the town of Kutaisi, emerging from the Caucasian foothills, highlighted by the briskly flowing Rioni River, with close-ups on faces and the backs of heads, children and adults alike, always displaying a playful air, often deleting the dialogue entirely, suggesting a Georgian filmmaker adding the cinematic poetry of Terrence Malick to his repertoire, where the music often tells the story over long, silent passages. Written, directed, edited, and narrated by Koberidze, who studied at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin, he works in collaboration with his cinematographer, Faraz Fesharaki, shot with a mix of 16mm and digital, creating a fairy tale about two young lovers who meet by chance in the opening of the film, agreeing to meet the next day for a date, but both are magically transformed into older versions of themselves, looking like other people, losing the essence of who they are in the process, only remembering the date. Neither have the capacity to recognize the other, so life goes on in an aimless and drifting kind of way, with a wandering camera capturing the nuances of this ancient city, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, going back to the 6th century BC and the ancient Kingdom of Colchis (THE GOLDEN KINGDOM OF COLCHIS - Atinati), with its narrow, winding streets, yet the stunning locations serve as launching points for a series of photogenic wonders, accentuating the town’s bridges and parks, a truly spectacular river that continually holds our fascination, exuberant kids on the street playing soccer, plentiful dogs roaming about, and several outdoor café’s. The voice of a narrator guides us through, sounding much like Geoffrey Holder as the narrator in Tim Burton’s CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005), as there’s a snarky sarcasm that suggests an all-knowing omniscient eye, as if telling a bedtime story, with magical realism sprinkled about like fairy dust. Musical composer Giorgi Koberidze, the director’s brother, utilizes Georgian traditional music to wondrous effects, with young girls spontaneously breaking out into song at an outdoor café (on the night of the date), or often providing a haunting background to utterly sublime images onscreen. While ostensibly a love story, the length and constantly roaming camera finding random subjects of interest suggests this is more of a time capsule tribute to the Georgian city of Kutaisi and the continuation of the Georgian culture in general. The Soviet Georgian Republic declared its independence in 1991, but with the recent Russian attacks on the Ukraine, there are rumblings about a similar occurrence in Georgia, as Russia was loathe to grant its independence and always viewed it as an extension of Russia. These ominous implications are mentioned briefly by the narrator, “a time of atrocities and crimes,” never explicitly detailing the specifics of the reference, but we hear thunder on the mountains, which also sound like exploding artillery shells, where the serenity of this harmonious setting could be erupted at any moment, turning all of this into a fading memory.
Opening in a Bressonian moment, as he obsessively captured the feet of characters, with the camera only finding their feet, as Lisa (Oliko Barbakadze), a pharmacist, accidentally drops a book that Giorgi (Giorgi Bochorishvili), a soccer enthusiast, graciously picks up, both openly exchanging pleasantries, before they go along their way, but they accidentally meet in the exact same place again, with Lisa confessing “Coincidence is reliable,” finally deciding to meet intentionally the next day, setting a date. But the curse of the Evil Eye intrudes, changing their fortunes, promising they would not be the same when they woke up the next day, and despite taking precautions, this proves to be true. Lisa (Ani Karseladze) and Georgi (Giorgi Bochorishvili) no longer recognize themselves, continually staring at themselves in mirrors, finding it impossible to believe. But Lisa loses all memory of her medical background, while Georgi loses all athleticism for soccer, both finding themselves in a strange no man’s land. Remembering the date, however, both show up, sitting at different locations, completely unrecognizable to one another, staring blankly off into the night underneath the dark foliage of tall trees, but each thinks the other has been diverted for unexplained reasons. Both independently take a job from the same bar owner (Vakhtang Fanchulidze) at the same café where they were supposed to meet, with Lisa learning to sell ice cream, while hoping to eventually run into Georgi, who improbably works nearby operating a horizontal bar on a nearby bridge, offering prize money to anyone who can deadhang for two minutes (we never see anyone successfully do it). Prominently figuring into the film is the prevalence of the upcoming World Cup, including the use of the song Notti Magiche, GIANNA NANNINI & E. BENNATO: ⊱ Un' estate Italiana YouTube (4:27), an anthem for the 1990 World Cup, playing through the duration of an exquisitely sequenced, slow-motion montage of kids playing soccer, yet here Argentinean soccer star Lionel Messi is the anointed hero, with bars and café’s looking to capitalize by installing a projector and screen on the premises to attract avid soccer fans, yet just as quickly the narrator makes an abrupt turn, describing our era as the age of atrocity, an era when forest fires fueled by human greed killed 1.25 billion animals, and then just as quickly gets back to the developing story. The simplicity of the story allows the filmmaker to immerse viewers in the sights and sounds of the city, becoming an abstract mosaic of the inhabitants, where perspectives are unique, with plenty of digressions, even including a substory on the spoken intentions of stray dogs, romanticizing the innocence of the times, suggesting this couple is like many other couples, all living collectively in a town of 150,000, each with their own story to tell, recalling Jules Dassin and The Naked City (1948). Through voiceovers and intertitles, and occasional changes in film speed, there are lengthy passages of cinematic poetry, solitary moments that suggest little more than the passage of time, drawing attention to the beauty of the moment, yet the beating heart of the film is a reverence for soccer, endlessly watching kids at play, where boys, often playing without their shirts, are still playing with the girls, one showing her incredible dexterity with the ball, while dancing celebrations are the norm, juxtaposed against highly charged moments watching the World Cup. It’s a brightly colored fantasy of joyful exuberance, which stands in stark contrast with the missing dream of the young couple, harshly robbed of their quickly developing romantic infatuation. One part love story, another part city symphony, it all begins by overlooking something that should bring wonder, with the film quietly transforming into observing things far more commonplace, with suggestions that we need to see the world around us with an entirely new perspective.
The film recalls Alan Rudolph’s trippy reincarnation romance flick MADE IN HEAVEN (1987), a fantasy-comedy with Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis, two souls who cross paths in Heaven and then attempt to reconnect once they are reborn on Earth, losing all remembrance of one another, having just 30-years to find their true love. Search is the main ingredient of that film, while the journey, or odyssey, is the stuff of dreams in this one, with the narrator asking us to close our eyes and only open them again when we receive a sound signal, the magical moment of transformation. It’s a bit crushing to lose someone so close to the outset, where they are the only ones who are affected, but Koberidze uses a clever aural trick, as an unhappy Lisa must look for a new job due to lack of money, yet an exhilarating piano spurt from a Schubert Impromptu ironically anticipates a joie de vivre that her character does not yet suspect. Lisa attempts to break the curse, but she tries in vain, both seemingly stuck in time, helpless against the mysterious forces of fate. Another side story includes a film-within-a-film, as two local filmmakers (the director’s actual parents) decide to make a film about couples in love and commission a photographer (Irina Chelidze) to suggest 50 couples who could take part in the film project, pairing them down to just six for the final cut, with Lisa and Georgi the last couple to be chosen, assured that there’s little chance they’d actually be chosen, yet this unexpectedly brings them closer together, especially when they make the final cut. The bar owner sends them on a journey out into the countryside together to pick up a homemade birthday cake for his wife, a delightful excursion that reveals an abundance of pastoral delights, as others are there as well to pick up their cakes, all assembled beside an outdoor table, filmed from high above in a bird’s eye view, offering a resplendent look at the surrounding countryside, where people are viewed as tiny figures in a gloriously expanded landscape. Divided into two sections, always following Lisa and Giorgi, though perhaps intentionally losing the main story, with the director keeping his eye sharpened for absurdities and also the terrible events of the present, reminding us of a catastrophic world, with last year’s burning of millions of hectares of forest, but it also includes a city where dogs meet to watch soccer at their favorite bar, enthralled by the face of Argentinian soccer magician Messi being projected onto frescoes and statues, while five young boys make a gargantuan climb up a steep stairway, each with Messi’s name and number painted on their bare backs, suggesting this is a director who fiercely celebrates the beauty of digression as an art form. An artist who prefers the long form, Koberidze’s first film, LET THE SUMMER NEVER COME AGAIN (2017) was a three and a half hour film about a young Georgian who aspires to be a professional dancer in Tbilisi, but falls in love with a military officer, a film that has never found a distributor. That film, shot entirely on a cell phone, apparently repeats the horizontal bar game, so it’s a feat no one has been able to master in six cinema hours so far. While the narrator may be whimsically offputting for some, turning people off to the fairy tale aspect of the film, viewers may get frustrated while enraptured at the same time, especially since so much of the rest is told with a near documentary style of cinéma vérité realism, exhibiting, perhaps, an imaginative hyper-realism, slowly evolving into a voluptuous, self-reflective, and thoroughly sensual film, always surrounded by incredible beauty, as the oddly unique style can be thoroughly enchanting. Perhaps more than anything, this is a fiercely liberating cinema, breaking the boundaries of what’s considered acceptable, challenging viewers in new and different ways. Not everyone will agree, as some will find it overlong, thinking nothing really happens over such an extended period of time, particularly those viewing it virtually at home, but the stunning innovation and cinematic allure of the film may remind some of Paolo Sorrentino’s magnificently gorgeous texture, yet this seems to exist in a world of its own, still demonstrating an Eastern European sensibility to Western audiences, as this has the feeling of an ancient story, just updated and modernized. Hansel and Gretel had spells placed on them in the woods, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Valerie a týden divu) (1970) is an allegorical fairy tale, Argento’s Suspiria (1977) takes place at a boarding school where Black Magic was allegedly practiced, while Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922) drew extensively from Transylvanian folklore, so this sort of thing has been told many times before, but to the director’s credit, this version is uniquely different, yet still utterly captivating.
