What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?

Some peo­ple think foot­ball is a mat­ter of life and death,” Bill Shankly, Liverpool’s famed for­mer man­ag­er, once said. ​“I don’t like that atti­tude. I can assure them it is much more seri­ous than that.” Foot­ball has long been a sport for dream­ers and in Geor­gian film­mak­er Alexan­dre Koberidze, Shankly may have found anoth­er ally.

In What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, set in the bustling city of Kutaisi on the Rioni Riv­er, the game is watched or played on every street cor­ner. Even the local stray dogs, one named Vardy no less, have their favourite view­ing spots. Koberidze’s sec­ond fea­ture is a sweep­ing­ly roman­tic por­trait of the Geor­gian city and the love – between peo­ple and for foot­ball – that is its life force.

Shot on beau­ti­ful, tex­tured 16mm and scored with ele­gant clas­si­cal music com­posed by the director’s broth­er, the film is tight­ly con­struct­ed in form – shot to shot, there is a rit­u­al­is­tic pre­ci­sion to the images of Kutaisi life. Whether its shoes, glass­ware, foot­ball shirts or the local cheese bread, khacha­puri, the film­mak­er uses close-ups to cen­tre the quo­tid­i­an and observe its mun­dane beau­ty. Yet in nar­ra­tive terms the film is loose and float­ing, invit­ing dream­like laps­es in con­cen­tra­tion over its 151-minute run­time and employ­ing a whim­si­cal, folk­loric log­ic to its dri­ving love story.

Lisa (Ani Karse­ladze) and Gior­gi (Gior­gi Bocho­r­ishvili), the film’s cen­tral char­ac­ters, fall for each oth­er at first sight and are then imme­di­ate­ly torn apart by a curse that changes their faces overnight. Their pro­posed date nev­er hap­pens, despite both of them wait­ing for the oth­er at the elect­ed café, because they sim­ply don’t recog­nise each other.

Gior­gi also los­es his foot­balling abil­i­ty, while Lisa can no longer prac­tice as a phar­ma­cist. Each then seeks a new way of life, with Gior­gi work­ing metres from Lisa and their frag­ment­ed romance find­ing a new way to repair itself. In his idyl­lic city sym­pho­ny, Koberidze cel­e­brates the serendip­i­ty of fate and the rhythms of dai­ly life that bring togeth­er what is meant to be.

It’s hard not to be wooed by this play­ful film that, among oth­er things, sets a mon­tage of chil­dren play­ing a scrap­py game of foot­ball to ​‘Not­ti Magiche,’ the offi­cial song of Italia 90, and asks the audi­ence to close their eyes on screen when the curse is about to take effect. The film ebbs and flows through the every­day with these moments of mag­ic pep­pered throughout.

So while World Cup fever kicks off in the city and the sport­ing dream­ers take their seats, the two lovers find their path togeth­er. Foot­ball is a mat­ter of life and death, but so is walk­ing in the park, watch­ing the riv­er rush by or hang­ing the wash­ing out to dry. It’s every­thing and noth­ing, as easy as breath­ing, and in Koberidze’s world it all makes per­fect sense.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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