Review: Memories in Double Exposure
Review of Where Do We Begin, dir. Monika Majorek, 2024
by Andy Stoeva
The VHS rumbles, digesting your memories. Suddenly a familiar face – your own, looks back at you with a smile, peeking through time. Static blurs the screen with a hissing sound; suddenly it’s Christmas Eve when you were four and unwrapping gifts was still a joy. Static. Birthdays. Static. You, eight, taking piano lessons. Static – and the man behind the camera is gone.
“Please, leave a message after the signal”.
Polish writer-director Monika Majorek’s debut feature Where Do We Begin opens with Ola (Maja Pankiewicz) holding the phone to her ear. Her father’s voice echoes through the voicemail, but she cannot reach him anymore – he took his own life a few years ago. In an effort to reconnect with her family, she returns to her hometown in the countryside only to find out that her childhood house is up for sale.
In her two-year absence, she has drifted away from her siblings Pipek (Sebastian Dela) and Ajka (Klementyna Karnkowska) and they attempt to shorten their distance by recreating old videos and photographs their father (Bartlomiej Topa) took. Through revisiting their memories in a double exposure of past and present, they try to deal with his suicide.
Majorek subtly brings mental health in focus, exploring the multiple ways sorrow can affect different types of people. Ola dwells on the past and regresses into her teenage self, especially during arguments with her mother (Agata Kulesza) and Pipek fights back his own depression. While Ajka is watching a recording that shows their father’s repressed despair, she remarks: “I didn’t remember him like this. I remember totally nothing, as if he did not exist” – which is also a common way to cope with trauma. This concept is superimposed over the polarity between career and family, accentuating the fragility of long-distance communication and leaving us with the urge to ring our parents the moment we leave the theater.
This emotional pay-off is perhaps what brought Where Do We Begin the audience award for best fiction feature at Warsaw Film Festival. The filmmaker builds solid individual characters whose connection looks genuine and realistic. Even when the dialogue seems stiff, perhaps due to its delivery, it seems less important and does not bother the viewer, as Majorek relies on visuals to illustrate her metaphors. A broken swing creaking in the wind immediately calls to mind the characters’ broken childhood. We see Pavel’s things packed and discarded in the attic – and we understand that after death our whole life can fit in a cardboard box. This approach is simple but effective, conveying subliminal meaning without overwhelming the viewer. Still, the treasure hunt for old photos and videos around the house becomes repetitive and stays one-note, lacking diversity of storytelling devices.
Despite the passive subject – as most of the action happens in the family members’ inner worlds – DOP Mateusz Skalski keeps the dynamic alive by never standing still. If the characters are motionless, the movement is in the camera work or the lighting. However, Jan Ignacy Królikowski’s incessant syrupy score takes away from the impact, distracting and at times resembling the soundtrack of a Hallmark film. In moments of silence, emotion is in its rawest.
Majorek completes the narrative by mirroring the first scene, but this time showing all the siblings together, reminding us that distance is not always physical – and that it is up to us to take care of our loved ones.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to pick up. My dad is calling.