On the Verge of… The title itself makes the watcher thinks and begins to fill his mind with mystery. The entrance scene itself, consumes the watcher’s mind and leaves him in a complete wonder. Breathless, simple but yet complex film that is in a way dark and melancholic.
Who is Mitya (Aleksei Konsin)? A boy who is learning how to become a shaman? A confused teenager? A boy who is just more longing for the spiritual world and doesn’t care about material one? Or just a curious boy who is interested in esotery and all the mysteries of life and “beyond”.
Mitya is suffering from epilepsy, he has seizures in which he experiences visions, almost out of body experiences. Often, he is seeing raven in his visions, and claims that raven is his totem animal. Andrey (Igor Vorobev), Mitya’s father, is a short-minded person that does not understand his sons’ vegetarian diet and his spirituality, he doesn’t want to accept him being different. After uncle Kolya’s (Rasid Aituganov) visit, everything begins to change. Mitya is much more open towards his uncle than father, probably because he was the only person besides his friend that introduced him to shamanism that understood him.
Andrey begins to question both Mitya and Kolya. He starts to think that they are members of religious sect and starts questioning their sexuality. Too long he was suppressing his emotions and in one moment he exploded. True shock is triggered in the mind of a watcher when Mitya’s inferentiality towards death unveils.
What this short film is trying to present is that we should open our eyes, stop being repulsive towards the new ideas, and avoiding the new unknown things. Many people are being abused every day just for being different, for not following “the flock”. We could expect that kind of behavior from anybody but when it comes from our parents it hurts the most. Therefore, Mitya closed himself in his shell, in his own world. One of the ways of understanding his character is depression. Recently his mother died, and maybe that is the reason he is trying to reach the spiritual world. He is hoping that he might find his mother in “the transformation of soul”, the way he understands death.
Maybe the films outcome wouldn’t be as such if Mitya had someone to talk to before, someone who would understand him. The situation which later stays carved in the mind of the watcher is the doctor’s reaction. As the time passes, after the film finished, it starts making the watcher angry in some way.
Each actor played his part the best way possible. Good directing (Anna Antonova) gave the film dark, emotional, otherworldly and mysterious note. Filmed so everybody could understand the story in their own way.
Whether the watcher is religious, atheist, agnostic this amazing short film will leave him/her in wonder. This is a kind of psychological and philosophical film that will make you think about it for a long time, you want be able to forget so quick like some.