Dry Leaf

 

Director Alexandre Koberidze

camera on the set

DRY LEAF                B                                                                                                      Georgia  (186 mi)  2025  d: Alexandre Koberidze

Keep going straight to the end of the road and you’ll find it.

Intentionally shot blurry and slightly out of focus with an old 2008 Sony Ericsson W595 mobile phone that ceased production in 2011, much like his debut feature LET THE SUMMER NEVER COME AGAIN (2017), which was shot with the same camera, this long and meandering film, split into two parts, is a journey in itself, where it’s radically different than anything else you’ll see in theaters, requiring patience and an eye for detail, as we’re seeing everything with unspoiled eyes, like revisiting old photographs, where the one thing you learn here is that it’s not about the final destination, but about the journey itself.  The time spent with this film is an invaluable experience, as the continual blurriness alters our perspective, making us see things differently.  With compliments to Kiarostami’s WHERE IS MY FRIEND’S HOUSE? (1987) and his short film ROADS OF KIAROSTAMI (2005), much of this is spent in rural roadsides, off the beaten path, where the slower pace of life is simply different, becoming not just a road movie, but the inner journey of a man who unwittingly discovers himself, while at the same time it’s an investigative film that challenges the perceptions of viewers, becoming a meditation on Georgian life and landscapes, where at one point a worldly uncle recalls Georgia’s history of Soviet Occupation.  In this culture, it’s not uncommon to approach strangers, or visit unknown homes, where the greeting is always friendly, while in America these days, that kind of behavior could get you shot, as people are so distrustful and suspicious of strangers, yet in the 50’s and 60’s, even in America people left their doors unlocked, as there was no fear that anything bad would happen.  From the maker of 2022 Top Ten List #7 What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021), which was distinctly unique, where the connecting thread to this film is an obsessive passion with soccer, with an explicit homage to Messi, and by the end even Maradona appears.  The outstanding sound design and musical accompaniment is by the director’s brother Giorgi, who also scored his earlier film, a mix of electronic and classical tones, creating a leitmotif accompanying various moments of the journey, perfectly balancing the unique visual experience with an equally original musical counterpoint, where watching this is very much like watching a silent film.  Written, directed, edited, and shot by Koberidze, a director who has always displayed a predilection for acute observation, this is an impressionistic film to get immersed into, feeling like a transformative journey exploring the interaction between humans and their environment, featuring the heavy use of a storyteller-narrator, initially screening at the Locarno Film Festival, which is known for taking on more adventurous projects that mainstream festivals aren’t interested in, receiving a Jury special mention and the Fipresci prize, where you may not find anything else like this in your lifetime, so that by itself is invaluable.  Due to the extreme aesthetic, however, this will probably not be found in theaters and may only be shown at film festivals. 

Growing up in Tbilisi during the post-Soviet era, Georgian citizens often endured long periods of electricity blackouts, where just learning to survive was the main thing.  Graduating from the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin (DFFB), Koberidze contributes writings on cinema to various publications, actively engaging in film criticism and theory.  Like an experimental cinema exercise, the film’s hazy images evoke memories of another time, taking us into a place we’ve never been, challenging viewers in ways unlike other films, capturing the pre-smartphone mindset, when people had a tendency to look around more and actually see their environment, requiring a mental adjustment, where another connecting thread of all Koberidze’s films is that they are full of digressions.  Essentially a father, Irakli (the director’s father David Koberidze), scours the rural countrysides in his Subaru van in search of his missing daughter Lisa, a 28-year old sports photographer who was on assignment photographing abandoned football fields in small communities for a sports magazine, but who has gone missing, albeit intentionally, leaving a note behind not to worry, asking not to be followed, yet after a month passes without a word, fatherly impulses kick in as he tries to retrace her journey in search of football fields in rural villages across Georgia, many of which have been overgrown by wild grass.  A largely internalized journey, finding himself in the same places his daughter has been, the father astutely reflects, “Seeing the same things, even if not at the same time, is a kind of togetherness.”  With the help of the magazine editor Levani (Otar Nijaradze), who just happens to be invisible, yes, that’s right, invisible, as are many others in these remote communities who are questioned throughout the quest, heard but not seen, while others are completely visible, remaining something of a mystery for viewers, like a ghostly aspect, where the past mingles with the present in a relationship that suggests so much of our lives remains hidden and out of sight, even to us, where the past is simply forgotten.  In reference to the title, the director has acknowledged in the Director's Note, “In football, a ‘dry leaf’ is a kick with an unpredictable landing of the ball – much like our characters who surrender to the journey and trust the wind to lead them.”  Going further, “In the late 1950’s, Brazilian footballer Didi introduced a technique for kicking the ball called the ‘dry leaf.’  Just as a dry leaf falls from a tree and it’s impossible for the human eye to calculate where it will land, with this technique it’s impossible for the goalkeeper to predict the exact trajectory of the ball.  The thing is, it remains a mystery for the shooter as well.  Try to remember a leaf falling from above––how it changes direction and speed, sometimes dropping fast and straight to the ground, only for everything to shift suddenly.  It begins to hover slowly and calmly before changing its path again, and so on, depending on the height, the wind, the humidity, and countless other factors we’re not even aware of.  Even when it reaches the ground, the leaf’s journey isn’t over — a gust of wind or a little boy on his way to school might carry it to a different neighborhood, or someone might sweep it into a bag with thousands of other leaves and send it to a place where leaves are burned.”

The way the camera lingers over its subjects and its absurd use of humor recalls the great Georgian filmmaker Otar Iosseliani, maker of BRIGANDS: CHAPTER SEVEN (1996) and FAREWELL, HOME SWEET HOME (1999), who studied under the great Russian/Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko, where repression under the Soviet regime caused him to eventually seek exile in France, as the lingering effect of Russian influence is an invisible force hovering over Koberidze’s films, where the past is always present.  Part of the director’s interaction with invisible characters came about as he was traveling through the rural areas and found it difficult to approach strangers to ask them to appear in his film, so the idea of invisibility allowed him to film more freely, unencumbered by added pressures.  Essentially a landscape road movie with various strangers appearing or interacting at different intervals along the way, as even the faces of the protagonists are a blur, blending into a constantly changing landscape, where the length of the film matters, as it allows viewers to adjust to the rhythms and idiosyncrasies of what they’re watching, using the camera as an unseen character, becoming a mesmerizing experience in the theater, as viewers never know what to expect.  As the scenery shifts from city to countryside, trees, grass, apples, as well as horses, donkeys, cows, cats, and dogs appear more frequently, producing entirely different sounds, like the chirping of birds, or the humming of insects, yet what drives the film is the element of surprise, the curiosity to unravel the family mystery and unlock just what happened to the missing daughter, where only fragments of her presence are detected, which may feel slight for a three-hour film, and it does get repetitive, but it’s a meandering journey that accentuates spontaneity in the moment, honing in on tiny details that would otherwise be easily overlooked, like a cup placed next to a waterfall to allow passers-by to drink.  The camera lingers on changing landscapes at different hours of the day, with varying shades of light, capturing empty fields, cows grazing, dilapidated goalposts, or none at all, while speaking to children playing football along the way, creating a temporal rhythm and visual texture that is entirely its own.  The emphasis on the ruins of goalposts mirrors the use of already obsolete camera technology, where the aesthetic matches the subject matter, as so much of our lives simply fades away over time.  With the destruction of soccer fields to make way for the construction of new hotels, “Where would you play after the football field is demolished?” a young boy is asked.  “Everywhere,” he responds enthusiastically.  Just when you think all hope is lost, a series of events mysteriously alter our perspective, with a resolution happening offscreen, suggesting not all mysteries need to be solved.  Literally defying trends in HD and 4K filmmaking, challenging the direction of where cinema is heading, this is radical yet old-school filmmaking, an immersive sensory experience that creeps up on you, providing a mirror of ourselves, as if existing between reality and a dream, recalling Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010), with the camera essentially inhabiting the subjectivity of a ghostly state of mind.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

 

Director Kogonada

Kogonada with Colin Ferrell

Kogonada and Ferrell with Margot Robbie

A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY                 B+                                                      Ireland  USA  (108 mi)  2025  d: Kogonada

This is the first day of my life
Swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They’re spreading blankets on the beach

Yours was the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
And I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go

Bright Eyes, First Day of My Life, 2005, Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life [Official Music Video] YouTube (3:06)

The most hilariously playful of the essayist-turned-filmmaker Kogonada films, which would include the ravishingly beautiful naturalism of 2017 Top Ten List #5 Columbus and the sci-fi world of artificial intelligence in After Yang (2021), where the tagline of this film is:  What if you could open a doorway and walk through it to re-live a defining moment from your past?  While the release has been postponed several times, the first film Kogonada neither wrote nor edited, it has taken an avalanche of negative criticism, with some suggesting it’s among the worst films of the year, even described as a bomb, yet this is nothing as they describe, instead it’s actually a weirdly fascinating, fun experience, clever and insightful, absurdist in its own way, where it takes us down a rabbit hole, much like Jacques Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating (Céline et Julie vont en bateau) (1974), while it also recalls the romantic time traveling escapades of Bertrand Bonello’s 2024 Top Ten List #9 The Beast (La Bête), Charlie Kaufman’s I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020), or Robert Schwentke’s The Time Traveler's Wife (2009), while also reminiscent of the quirky romantic journey of Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer (2009), a throwback to the whimsical comedy of Zach Braff’s GARDEN STATE (2004), or even the disoriented editing structure of Charlie Kaufmann and Michel Gondry’s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004).  In other words, despite what disparaging critics have suggested, this is not a waste of time, but a bonanza of riches, a romantic fantasy filled with moments of joy, but also major disappointments, as it excruciatingly examines the flawed lives of two people who are single, filled with regrets, missed opportunities, and the trauma of bad relationships, which is part of the baggage we all carry and what makes us who we are, magically making them come together through a kind of ingeniously clever, futuristic matchmaking service, where there’s a humanizing beauty to be had in their shared moments together.  Korean-American filmmaker Kogonada’s birth name is Park Joong Eun, where his professional name was derived from renowned Japanese auteur Yasujirō Ozu’s longtime screenwriter Kogo Noda, and what we know is that he’s developed a reputation for the unconventional.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is the film’s musical score is written by Joe Hisaishi, who is best known for his collaborations with Studio Ghibli Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki, the maker of such enchanting films like MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988), PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997), SPIRITED AWAY (2001), HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE (2004), and more recently The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu) (2014) and The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka) (2023), where this marks the celebrated composer's first score outside of Japan, adding a touch of magic to the experience.  There’s nothing quite like this in any of the year’s movie releases, where the uniqueness of the subject matter, beautifully realized by screenwriter Seth Reiss, a former head writer for the irreverent, satirical publication The Onion and on the staff of Late Night with Seth Meyers, becomes a cause for celebration.  While deeply felt and understated, this may not be as intellectually challenging as the filmmaker’s earlier work, but it is lighter and infinitely more entertaining, revealing a side we haven’t really seen before, literally swooning with romanticism, where these big name Hollywood actors are an absolute delight in something less mainstream and more offbeat, and while the protagonist’s problems aren’t exactly so earthshaking that it requires divine intervention, like George Bailey in Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), the solution does appear to be driven by the transformative power of love. 

Carrying over the married couple actors from his previous film, including the artistically stunning, visually dazzling cinematography by Benjamin Loeb, employing a vivid color palette, while adding a few new surprises, the unusually versatile Colin Ferrell stars as David, a single man with a perpetually lonely soul, yet he’s completely relatable as someone we might have known, smart, imaginative, yet not exactly socially engaging, typically keeping to himself, where he doesn’t easily make connections.  When his car is booted for parking issues, in desperation he turns to a rental car agency specializing in emergencies since 1994, whose homemade flyer advertisement is seen posted on a wall directly in front of his car, including a phone number and a mysterious broken heart.  Arriving in this immense warehouse that is completely dark except for an illuminated card table on the far side, like a football field away, where two people sit under a giant sign that says The Rental Car Agency – none other than Kevin Kline (you have to do a double take to realize that’s him) and a German-accented Phoebe Waller-Bridge who relishes the use of the word “fuck,” whose surreal personalities are oddly eccentric, characters you might find in a Monty Python movie, not at all what he expects, as it plays out like an audition, where they already have a professional headshot photo of him, a picture David has never seen before, informing him “Sometimes we have to perform to get to the truth,” so none of this makes sense.  He’s also a bit surprised that the only cars offered are two identical 1994 Saturn SL’s, which are no longer in operation, yet there they are, and while he’s flummoxed by the bizarre way the car agent’s communicate, almost like robotic AI versions of themselves, insisting there’s only one right answer to all his inquiries, nonetheless he’s persuaded to purchase the accompanying GPS, which the car didn’t originally have in the pre-internet era, with no outlets for a phone, complete with an animated screen.  As it turns out, that GPS is a major character in the film, seemingly omniscient and all-knowing, with a cryptic voice offering advice that goes well beyond navigational directions, voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith, with David seen in the car on the road happily belting out one of the songs from the musical A Chorus Line while he drives to a wedding, A Chorus Line (1985) - One Scene (8/8) | Movieclips YouTube (4:09), not the norm, for sure, yet it exudes pizzazz from the hidden regions of his less than dynamic personality.  Upon arrival at the wedding in the pouring rain, taking place in a hotel called La Strada (after the Fellini film), all the guests are handed Jacques Demy The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) umbrellas for an outdoor service (just a few of the many cinematic cues referenced), where David looks across the aisle to see a woman looking back at him, Margot Robbie as Sarah, where the pair briefly engages in conversation afterwards.  He’s more reserved and shy, quietly haunted by regrets and unresolved relationships, while she’s more of a free spirit, where her cheerful exterior hides the vulnerability and deep turmoil within, as both are unhappily single, where neither is the person they would like to be, but they are so emotionally guarded that they’d rather ignore any obvious attraction to avoid the risk of getting hurt, so the encounter ends awkwardly, seemingly built on self-deprecating declarations, but nothing becomes of it before going their separate ways.  Instead, on the road afterwards, the GPS informs him of an upcoming spot to stop for a fast food burger.  Incredulously, Sarah is there as well, coming over to share a table with David, where they realize each is driving the exact same vintage Saturn, quickly assessing that this is more than mere coincidence.  Confessing a few personal secrets about themselves, their fears, their insecurities, and their fear of commitment, discovering both have been disappointed in relationships, they decide to continue the journey together, but only after Sarah’s car fails to start, so they really have no other choice, turning into a road trip that is partly a journey down memory lane and partly a spiritual awakening.   

Literally thrown in each other’s laps, it all seems designed by a higher power, embarking on a fantastical, magical mystery tour together, where the GPS leads them to a series of mysterious doors in the middle of nowhere as open portals to another dimension that allows them to revisit key moments of their past, like a lighthouse in Canada that may or may not have led to a personal epiphany for David, or an art museum that Sarah used to visit with her equally free spirited mother, developing a trusting relationship with the guard who let them in after hours when the museum is completely dark, so these are memorable places, holding a very special significance in their lives, perhaps the source of their negative views of themselves.  They connect on an existential level, both very self-aware, digging into who they are and how they got to be that way, happier alone than in the company of others, yet that is equally frustrating, challenged by their own unique limitations, as a dark cloud seems to hover over each of them, stymied by an inability to connect with others, yet visiting these doors is a bit like dating, as the accumulation of knowledge and the discovery of new possibilities is essential.  When another door leads to David’s high school, seeing him as a teenager while viewers see him as an adult, the film explodes into a full-blown musical, as David has the role of J. Pierrepont Finch in the Pulitzer prize-winning musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, suddenly finding himself performing onstage just after the girl of his dreams rejects him, breaking out into a song and dance, with Sarah, who is a musical junkie, howling with delight in the audience, A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY – Exclusive 6 Minute Scene YouTube (6:24).  It all feels cathartic, like this has a chance to change their future in some mysterious way, but neither one seems able to find that key, still locked in the past with no way out, where there’s a beautiful balance between cynicism and hope, as each one gets stuck in their own personal trauma, trying to reach out, but get blocked by their preconceptions, which has a way of bulldozing their hopes and dreams.  The filmmaker has a blast just visualizing this succession of doors, like one of their destinations where Sarah and David climb a hill that incredulously offers them a view of Earth from space.  With each passing door comes new revelations about a crucial event in each other’s lives that provides greater understanding into their character.  There’s an Alice in Wonderland innocence and naïveté about this, as these kinds of literary efforts are usually young people or teenagers passing through a phase into adulthood, but these are adults reverting back to their childhoods, seemingly rewiring the circuitry, but neither one is brave enough to reach out to the other, as they seem to need an extra boost to appreciate their own lives.  Perhaps the most therapeutic sequences are surreal and intoxicating moments where David is transported back to a hospital in Ireland on the day he was born where he’s anonymously able to encourage his own reticent father as a younger man (Hamish Linklater), while Sarah visits her ailing mother (Lily Rabe, daughter of actress Jill Clayburgh - - cool how the parents are partners in real life) in the hospital on the day she dies of cancer, a woman who sacrificed everything to give her daughter a good life, finally sharing that poignant moment together that they were never able to actually experience, offering some kind of corrective.  There’s a weirdly amusing, phantasmagorical nature to the entire experience, beautifully rendered, with just a touch of the right serious note, but as soon as we hear the sounds of Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life [Official Music Video] YouTube (3:06), we know we’re immersed in a whimsical theatrical journey brimming with optimism, given that distinct indie film vibe.   Kogonada is known for his distinctive style and philosophical themes, as the film explores the possibility of restoring belief in love and the potential to overcome cynicism as one gets older, overcoming that creeping doubt that lingers, where there’s a wonderful turn in one of the more dramatic scenes with Mitski’s rendition of Peter Townsend’s seminal song, Let My Love Open the Door | A Big Bold Beautiful Journey ... YouTube (2:43), which seems to be the missing key of the entire film, allowing them to begin anew, their lives forever altered, offering just a hint of hope that despite all obstacles, there is a pathway to a brighter future.  If you stay until the end of the closing credits, which features a breakthrough dance sequence, the last sound we hear are feet approaching a door that closes shut, suggesting the journey is now complete.  While it may not be what some people have come to expect, it does exude charm, feeling like the perfect antidote for these politically chaotic and overly traumatic times.