A lot has been said about loss – in cinema, in books, in music… And it seems that still not everything has been said, because such a personal thing is hard to pigeonhole. Monika Majorek in her Where Do We Begin shows the loss painfully, because it is unspeakable. And that always hurts the most.
The death of the father of Ola (Maja Pankiewicz), Pipek (Sebastian Dela) and Ajka (Klementyna Karnkowska) hangs unspeakable in the air. Everyone knows about it, everyone feels it, but no one wants to talk about it. It’s such an unwanted guest in the room, who sticks around and stubbornly replaces the place of someone you not only loved, but thanks to whom you loved others better. Everyone wants to forget about it as soon as possible and start living a new life – including the mother (Agata Kulesza), who has hooked up with a new man and, together with Pipek and Ajka, wants to move out of the house where the tragedy happened. She wants to leave all this sadness behind, because she doesn’t have the courage to face it.
The courage, but also the need to face the tragedy and look death straight in the eye, is found in Ola, who returns to her hometown after years. The house has changed, but she stubbornly wants it to remain as she remembers it. The house, the car, the photos, and videos found in the attic – she dives into it all up to her neck to try to understand.
Death, however, cannot be understood. It is always the resultant of many different components. The greatest tragedies are incomprehensible and silent. You can try to shout out the pain, but it will always echo loudest within us. This is the strength of this film – we don’t know why what happened exactly happened. But we are shown the landscape after a huge battle. We see the effects, but we don’t know the causes. And it’s not even a matter of knowing them, but of observing, of being and watching, because maybe, by chance, we can hit upon good. And such good, even the smallest one, with all the pain one has experienced, must be caught, and held tightly, because thanks to it we can go those few steps further. And if we are lucky, we will come across it again. Step by step we will get back on our feet and start breathing – inhale by inhale. The loss will never be erased, it will never be as it once was, but maybe in another way it will be okay.
What plays out on screen between Agata Kulesza and Maja Pankiewicz is something extremely mesmerizing – this is acting of the highest order. The strength of the women, each of whom wanted to deal with the loss differently, for whom it was greater than they could ever admit. Terribly wise is a film that doesn’t give answers but offers hope.
The film Where Do We Begin (dir. Monika Majorek) to be seen at the 18th Mastercard OFF CAMERA as part of the Polish Feature Film Competition.
Kinga Majchrzak