Where Dragons Live (2024) ‘Sheffield DocFest’ Movie Review.

Documentaries and family histories have a strong, almost constant connection. Experienced practitioners and beginners to the specific form seem persistently drawn to delve into the depths of difficult and thorny family truths in order to understand their own decisions, attitudes, and predilections. It’s as if the format encourages them to reveal personal histories through an empathetic, curious lens. Not every project makes it. Some might just limit themselves to indulgence, while others manage to meander into intimate confessions that reaffirm the format’s power to investigate, unravel, and better understand.

Documentaries are charged with an inward-looking spirit of exploration, fostering a space where people try to dig deep into what and who came before them, locating both direct and invisible connections between past and present, and moving towards achievements painful though necessary about their own. self. The process must be emotionally demanding, enormously demanding, and peppered with difficult questions. How much do the subjects reveal and this process of building an intimate knowledge change the documentary’s ability to penetrate one’s soul and create uncomfortable, swallowed stories? Suzanne Raes’ film “Where Dragons Live” is not based on her own experiences, but peeks into the cracks of the Impey family’s history.

As the Impey family’s old home, the magnificent Cumnor House in Oxfordshire, is put up for sale, children and grandchildren consider their heritage and ancestry and face bitter, unpleasant and desperate claims. It is an astonishing house, one with forty-seven roof slopes and eighteen chimneys. Bearing all the trappings of a ‘creepy, haunted house’ as one describes it, the house and estate is described as a space that encourages the imagination to run and fear casts a spell. The implications of holding on to her are debated in a scene between the teenage nephews. The grandson advocates a pragmatic choice, reiterating the steep maintenance costs and declaring that their grandmother Jane is definitely more than a house. The niece, however, is more inclined to keep the house.

The film clearly delineates the differences in the way Jane and her husband Oliver’s children grew up, while calmly revealing not-so-rosy pictures of family ties. As much as being in the house, surrounded by all sorts of strange and fascinating curiosities and emblems of their parents’ individual obsessions and inclinations, both Harriet’s and her siblings’ childhoods are full of unique types, differentiated by emotional burdens and punishing expectations. .

Each of the siblings was held to different standards, thus divided in their memories of their parents, who may not have acted as conventional, ever-present forces in their lives. Parents demanded exceptional brilliance from their sons, one more than the other. They would casually make a cruel remark when a son called out blatantly discriminatory behavior, as if it didn’t matter to them what the emotional and mental consequences of their words and actions were. But Harriet was closest to their father, relishing the banter they shared as well as inheriting his dragon fetish.

With a scientific temperament, Jane was singular and ruthless in her pursuits. While her husband couldn’t have been a bigger cheerleader, the couple didn’t stop to reflect on the ramifications of the life they led, especially on their children. They were carefree, rigorous and so driven. The greatest sins in their book were a life that did not bury itself in incessant work and demonstrated the lack of an observant eye. Did they bother to pay attention to how they behaved with their children? Harriet wondered.

Yet imposing and aloof as she was, Jane’s quirks and strange habits stood out in everyone’s mind. It had all kinds of special provisions. A sofa in the house could only be occupied by women, while every other piece of cutlery or utility in the house had a note of instruction. A pile of knives had a piece of paper tied to it, warning to handle with care.

Any traces of resentment and antipathy perhaps directed at either her or Oliver were offset by the affection and longing that inherently and tightly held both parent and child together. Suzanne Raes travels with ease through the intricate conflicts that interweave between her subjects, but without ever sacrificing the complex, full-spectrum array of colliding memories. “Where Dragons Live” is an extremely delicate dissection of legacy and memory.

Where Dragons Live premiered at Sheffield DocFeast 2024.

Where Dragons Live (2024) Movie link: IMDb