REVIEW: Dea Kulumbegashvili unravels persecution in “Beginning”
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.
While you listen in on David’s sermon, played by co-writer Rati Oneli, from behind the pews at the back of the room, you’re privy to a reflection on faith at its most vulnerable. As the story of the binding of Isaac comes to its conclusion, and God tells Abraham, “now I know you fear God,” the red carpet that leads people into the church comes alive with red flames.
The burned church is a warning, nothing new to David, his parishioners or the police who decide to turn the other way. Insistent on rebuilding, David travels to meet the elders for material support, leaving his wife, Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili) and son Giorgi (Saba Gogichaishvili) alone.
A detective from Tbilisi, Alex (Kakha Kintsurashvili) as we come to know, travels down on the pretense of investigating, but is there for something much more sinister. He’s at the fire, watching the building slowly turn to embers, but where does he go?
On the pretense of meeting with David, the detective goes to their residence one night, asking Yana about motive and suspects until his tone turns coercive. There are no sounds but the creak of Yana shifting in her chair and the voice of the detective as he verbally assaults her off-screen.
After the attack, and at many times in the film, Yana returns to check on Giorgi as he sleeps. His face is framed by soft moonlight, magnified by the white of his blankets and pajamas. Her eyes are downcast, and rarely do they come up again except to gaze at her own angel.
Despite concerns of their safety in the neighborhood, Yana takes Giorgi outside for toys and fresh air. Landing in a green field dotted with yellow flowers, Yana lies down and closes her eyes as we watch from above, motionless for minutes on end. The camera moves maybe four times in the entire film, and here it is a slow pan from Giorgi’s concerned visage to his mom laying on the ground. She doesn’t move to the point where her son thinks she may be dead, and when she rises from the practical joke, Giorgi doesn’t let her go. We see their embrace from a respectful distance, but the position of the camera doesn’t take away from the tenderness of the moment.
When back at the house, cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan traps us. Unable to see around corners or away from where Yana rests on a living room chair, the dwelling juxtaposes the freeness of the outdoors. We hear the thud near the door of their house, but we can’t place it. Yana goes outside to investigate, and arrives at the river, lined with pink flowers whose colors only 35mm could rightly capture — the same place where a long take of Yana and her son traversing the beautiful plain took place just that morning.
The viewer is at a distance again when the detective grabs Yana, and the camera remains still as the feeling of dread and helplessness rush through to your stomach. It’s a disturbing point of view as you’re forced to watch the brutal sexual assault, going on for minutes until you have nothing but your vision left to connect you to the screen.
Just as Yana’s attacker comes from outside the screen does every other threat emerge. You’re left to discover them as she does, and feel the isolation that these threats of religious persecution and later, misogynistic disbelief, surround and belittle her.
In this film, every single tactic of oppression or gender-based discrimination is weaponized. Khachaturan’s camera refuses to move and let you escape the horror, and instead you’re rendered a passive witness to acts of violence that have rarely dared to be shown on film.
This is juxtaposed with shots that angle you in God’s eyes, though you know you’re powerless to his will. You look down as the parishioner’s children get baptized into a faith that will be used to scorn them, but they are able to move freely beyond the confines of the film’s edges. In the end, the characters and yourself are left to rely on the belief that there is something better outside of the frame.
Instead of escaping, Yana’s seeming end becomes a beginning. As if Abraham’s hand was reaching down to her, her ultimate fate is sealed with a drastically different outlook than if she had been stripped of all her faith.
With “Beginning,” Kulumbegashvili decides not to move away from the greatest tests of Yana’s life. It feels torturous at times, and numbing at every moment. Despite my revulsion, I couldn’t look away, because on that screen was partly the bravery to come face to face with some of the most horrific violence, isolation and othering a woman can endure. It couldn’t have been in any other way.