It is unimaginable to be an artist and not be troubled by the pain of your country, people, and human fate and to be engaged in creative activity in such a way. If you do not hurt and grieve, you cannot think, and therefore, you cannot judge. This is the reason why valuable works of art are sometimes created and sometimes they are not. The director, Levan Koghuashvili’s films are an expression of this anxiety, when it is difficult for you to touch on painful topics, but your conscience does not allow you to turn a blind eye and wrap them up beautifully. So poignant and painful is his film about emigration “Brighton 4th” (2021), and the delicate and heartbreaking problems of relationships are raised against this background, such as paternity, marriage, and friendship, where the problem arises only when the addiction to gambling becomes hysterical and hard-earned money annihilated. Unfortunately, there are not many directors in modern Georgian cinema who represent tragic themes as sincerely as Levan Koghuashvili does in his films. If you want to see America through an immigrant’s eyes, you should see “Brighton 4th,” where the characters, fleeing from the problems in their own country, face new problems.
The director presented this film at the Tribeca International Film Festival in New York, where it received three awards – for Best Film, Best Actor and Best Screenplay. The main role in the film is played by two-time Olympic champion wrestler Levan Tediashvili. After “Khareba and Gogia,” this was his second film role, where he portrayed himself as he was, indomitable, dignified and invincible. The film also features the role of one of the immigrants - Sergo - played by Kakhi Kavsadze, for whom this role turned out to be the last, and therefore the film was dedicated to him.
The film is set in Georgia and America, in particular, in the Brighton district in the south of Brooklyn. This district became famous back in the 1970s as a settlement of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, mostly from Ukraine and Russia. Georgia was no exception in this regard. Although the film (as the director himself noted) takes place around 2005-2006 and years have passed since then, it is not easy for immigrants from Georgia to easily establish themselves in a foreign country even today, which is not only the result of the difficult path immigrants have to go through, but also sometimes the result of their own reckless actions.
The film begins with a very interesting episode, where the camera captures in close-up the faces of the fans of the game between “Liverpool” and “Manchester” in a totalizator, who are in a hurry and hoping to earn easy money. During the match, a rough argument breaks out between them, after which one of the fans, annoyed by the aggressive spectators, is thrown out of the room. From this sleazy character, who is the main character, Kakhi’s brother, we learn that he lost in betting all the money his wife sent him from America to renovate his apartment, as well as the apartment itself. Kakhi tries to find a place for him to stay for the night, while he leaves his wife, Maka (Laura Rekhviashvili) alone at home and sets off to his son, Soso, who was sent to study in America and wants to become a doctor. Kakhi’s brother’s confession, standing against the backdrop of the statue of the Handsome Youth near the Sports Palace, gives us reason to think about how far his extravagant visit to the totalizator has led him.
The “American dream,” the pursuit of which began centuries ago and continues to this day, is crumbling before us in a gray, gloomy Brighton quarter of Brooklyn. It turns out that Soso (Giorgi Tabidze), who once yearned for education, lives in a small room in a shabby, faceless boarding house and works for a transport company. Moreover, he lost all the money he had at cards to enter into a fictitious marriage with his chosen partner, Lena (Nadezhda Mikhalkova). Kakhi's daughter-in-law, Natela (Tsutsa Kapanadze), who has been working hard with the elderly couple to send money to Georgia, has been waiting for four years for her husband, who has been "kicked out" from the totalizator, to renovate their house. Former opera singer Sergo, who was left penniless, could no longer find a home in his homeland and was left stranded in a foreign country, singing like a "nightingale" in a cage in the narrow corridors of a dormitory, while earning his living by working as a porter in a restaurant.
In the narrow corridors of the dormitory and the similarly “squeaky” rooms, where it would be difficult for a person to even wag their tail, the cameraman (Fhedon Papamichael) moves with masterful dynamics and captures the claustrophobic environment where all these characters are united by a common predicament - economic failure and collapsed dream towers. The same vacuum is created by the episode in the car, where the immigrants force the “crook” Kazakh to pay the due wages to the Georgian women who have been working with him in the hotel for several months without any payment. The false promises of this Kazakh, the cries of “later, later” and the endless crisis are so unbearable that the women are forced to turn to the Georgian immigrants for help again. This closed space in the car really creates a feeling of airlessness, that metaphorical airlessness that chokes the soul of immigrants and does not allow them to breathe, so that those who have fled their own country, “deprived” of oxygen, can enjoy the breeze blowing from the Brighton coast.
Sometimes I forget that the film is set in the Brighton district and I think that Kakhi is still in Tbilisi and next to him there is the Avlabari market, where he bought sulguni cheese from a peasant to take to his son. There, too, they sell fake perfumes on the street, like gypsies do here, and men who have gone to earn money choose cheap Chinese shoes to send to their wives, as if they were not found locally. No matter where you look in that quarter, Russian immigrants are creating a separate autonomy and appearing as gambling bosses, who are still fueled by the thieves’ mentality that "the money must be handed in or else…, "if they get caught, it's all over!"
We may think that the film is a disappointment in the “American Dream,” but it is not, because there are Western countries where immigrants are really trying to gain a foothold, but, unfortunately, the life of an immigrant seen from afar is not so easy. Some are unlucky, others lack the willpower to leave their bad habits in their collapsed country and start a new life anew, and sometimes we really realize that there is no paradise on earth. But more or less everything is still relative.
We cannot help but recall the social film about emigration by the English director Ken Loach, “Bread and Roses,” whose hero illegally arrives in Los Angeles from Mexico to work and starts working as a cleaner, against the background of which the main issue is highlighted, the exploitation of the socially lower class, namely cleaners. Their existence, of course, causes protest and comes into absolute dissonance with such a democratic state as America. The melancholic cold horizon of the gray, gloomy coast of “Brighton 4th,” the mediocre environment of the Brighton quarter, the miserable habit of immigrants and the national stereotypical ideas about the United States of America itself as a democratic, peaceful country cause the same inconsistency.
The visual, artistic aesthetics of the film do not change even when the hero finds himself from Georgia in America. Its distinguishing feature is only the highway that he travels on while traveling in a hearse in New York, in that hearse that first arouses the indignation of his daughter-in-law, who reproaches the Georgian immigrant driver for driving the guest away in this, indeed, fatal car for Kakhi. This driver is the mythical ferryman Charon, who takes the dead to the kingdom of Hades by boat. It is precisely because Brooklyn finally turns out to be the kingdom of Hades for Kakhi. If only his son could be saved from the debt he has incurred, he is ready to wrestle a former wrestler like him, the mafioso Amir (Yuri Zuri), much younger than him, and in case of loss, he will pay the money by selling his apartment in Tbilisi.
As for Levan Tediashvili’s acting skills, they have already been revealed in “Khareba and Gogia.” Despite the fact that he portrays Gogia’s completely different, charismatic, and handsome character, unlike Kakhi’s hero, the virtuosity of both roles is invaluable. In "Brighton 4th," his hero is an aged, wise, former champion who heroically and silently carries in his heart the feelings of his family and loved ones in his old age and tries to correct their stupid mistakes. Levan Tediashvili's natural acting, without exaggerated gestures and facial expressions, really causes the audience to break the barrier that sometimes arises between the audience and the actor, and you are completely immersed in his world.
The words he uttered to his son, "I'm sending you to America to play cards," sound with such a heartbreaking intonation, and not with a hint of reproach, that the father is ready to defend his son's every wrong step desperately to the end, out of love and not a sense of obligation, even if it costs him his life. Already old himself, he asks his daughter-in-law to start working with the elderly, so that he can somehow save money for his son. You may not be able to do any work, even when you have already achieved fame and fortune, when life has left you no other way. There is really nothing to do, but there is something that touches humanity, personal dignity. These are pure human relations, respect, dignity, which overcome all economic difficulties and no financial prosperity can blind you to maintain it. This is the reason why disappointed Kakhi leaves the apartment of an old couple on the very first day.
The director brought together people of different nationalities in the film: Georgians, Russians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks. The American is almost nowhere to be seen, except for the elderly couple who are coming to visit. “A hardship needs to be strengthened from within.” So, immigrants of different nationalities who have the same worries and concerns are united by one hardship. In this regard, the deceitful Kazakh is no exception, who turns out to have a mother with cancer and is trying to help her with the money he has earned at the expense of others, which becomes a reason for Kakhi to forgive him. It is rare for a Kazakh to suddenly undergo such a metamorphosis when, having been released from “captivity,” he returns to them and sits down at the table with them, and starts the song “Suliko” together with them and the role of a swindler goes far beyond. This may be because sometimes it seems incredible to us that a professional dishonest person can suddenly be surrounded by a nimbus in a matter of seconds.
Sitting at the table, people of different religions and nationalities, united by one thing in common - emigration and the fate of family members remaining in their homeland, find solace in dancing and singing, but this is not just dancing, this is a dance, from which all negative energy, bitterness, and spiritual pain are poured out. A similar cathartic charge is felt in the episode of Tedo's dance in the finale of Giorgi Ovashvili's film "The Other Side" and also in the scene in Nikoloz Shengelaia's film "Eliso," where crying and lamentation are contrasted with dancing and playing. "Mravaljamieri", sung over Kakhi's body, resonates like a victory anthem, a victory over death, when heroic death is the prelude to eternal memory.
Ketevan Ghonghadze
