Objects (2021)

*Watch the film on Amazon Prime here*

This short documentary is misunderstood almost as much as its three subjects.

Robert Krulwich is a journalist and reporter who has amassed a few things from his years in front of the camera and microphone. One of those treasured items is a handful of dead grass he brought home when he was a teenager, remembering a date with his girlfriend to Central Park. Heidi Julavits is an author whose crowded apartment is what you picture an author's apartment to be- books everywhere. Also there are some of the belongings of the European actress Isabelle Corey, and she begins imagining the life of the actress who suddenly turned her back on stardom for a life of anonymity. Rick Rawlings' family was constantly on the move thanks to his father's job. One day, he had been invited to a birthday party on the same day they were leaving town, so he stopped to say goodbye to the friend whose party he couldn't attend. The friend handed him a sugar egg, and Rick held onto that fragile piece for forty years, keeping it in a wooden box whose construction through materials of his childhood is also wrapped in memories.

I have a checkered history with objects. Stuff. Things. I've been married twice, and each marriage saw me bring absolutely nothing into my new households. You might think that due to my upbringing, I didn't have a lot of stuff and that is partly true, but I was also raised in a household(s) where physical items took precedence over familial relationships. When moving overseas (two tours in Japan, one extended visit/stay in the United Kingdom), it usually fell upon me to get ride of my "unnecessary" stuff first through forced garage sales or simply tossing items away. The Air Force would pay for a certain weight of household possessions before charging the personnel with the overweight total, and I don't think we ever made the cut off point before Dad would have to shell out money for items we "couldn't live without." Dad was an officer, so appearances had to be kept up, but with the deaths of my parents within the last three and a half years, I got an inside look at their possessions before they were dismissed into the world through internet auctions and garbage. I gave up my cherished books, comic book collection, toys, record albums, journals, drawings and more, so Mom could drag a broken grandfather clock across three continents for six decades on the hope that one day it would be repaired. It wasn't, and sold at an online auction for sixty dollars. That was just the tip of the iceberg. For thirty years of my adult life, I had four photos of myself from when I was a child. It took my parents' deaths before I got my hands on more pictures. Even then, the photographs inexplicably stop at about the time I was ten. I went to eight different schools from first grade through twelfth grade, and only have yearbooks from Grades 4-6, and 12th; granted, I threw out my 8th grade yearbook because no one would want to relive the kind of traumatic year I was having except through intenstive therapy.

This film is unfairly maligned for being boring, and highlighting three weirdos who are holding on to innocuous items that no one cares about but them. In such a disposable society, I can see that point of view, but to the three individuals their objects are remembrances of a happier or different time, and really aren't hurting anyone. I used to watch hoarding shows on cable television, having absolutely no sympathy for the hoarders thanks to my upbringing. My childhood households would never be considered a hoarded household (remember, appearances were everything- including a clean house), but I totally sympathized with tearful family members who realized the hoard was being chosen over them. Thanks to therapy, I was able to come to terms with being second best (and fourth best in the sibling pecking order), and didn't have to witness the chaotic descent of my family after retirement set in. I stayed on the opposite side of the country, built a life, and suffered through parental annual visits (complete with the delivery of more stuff that I did not want), before the parents were too old to drive to visit.

Krulwich, Julavits, and Rawlings are a little sheepish and apologetic when showing off their objects. I'm sure they've heard it all before, and shyly explain why the objects mean so much to them. It's their interests, their objects, and they aren't hurting anyone. When one of the subjects lets their object go for a badly executed idea and it gets destroyed, I felt almost as bad as the object's owner and the people responsible for the object. I knew the pain of being told you had to get rid of something, or worst yet, it being wrenched away from a life you were trying to build on your own. There was life and memories in these objects, but once you go (the old saying "you can't take it with you"), who's going to take care of the tuft of grass, the sugar egg, or Isabelle Corry's sweaters and make-up mirrors? This is why minimalism is all the rage right now- cluttered house, cluttered mind, and so on. I do have belongings, but often unintentionally refer to our possessions as my wife's possessions (I sleep in her bed, etc.). I have about a thousand films on physical media, another thousand books, but as a stay-at-home dad to three kids under the age of eight (one with special needs), there is absolutely no time to watch those films or read those books. Thanks to this documentary, the three subjects are able to explain how they got their items and what they mean to them. There are millions of people out there who don't get that chance, and when they pass away, it's up to family or strangers to get rid of the items. This probably explains why I'm also obsessed with reselling, collecting, urban exploration, and abandoned storage unit videos- I sometimes see something I owned as a child and teen, and then look upwards as if my parents were seeing the same thing- "Good thing I had to throw out that Japanese toy robot, it's only worth two thousand dollars today." I try to imagine an abandoned building back when it was a home. I never had a hometown until I finally labelled the town I spent the most time in as if I grew up there.

By film's end, I was fascinated by these objects. I have almost nothing from my childhood, and the accumulation of items since I reached adulthood and independence doesn't provide the same rose-colored memories that these three documentary subjects have. If anything, I am still bitter about the things I was brought that weren't my own, and have been on a quest to get rid of them for decades now. When my parents passed on, a lot of their stuff passed out of my house, too- donated, recycled, or thrown since I didn't need anyone's permission to get rid of them anymore. They meant nothing to me, and nothing to them since they dumped them on me. I hope Julia, Rick, and Robert hold onto their items and memories of how they made them feel, but like the internet meme of a horrified adult grandchild in front of a giant china hutch full of dishes, "Swedish death cleaning," and a popular decluttering book tells us- "nobody wants your shit."

Stats:
(2021) 63 min. (* * * * 1/2) out of five stars
-Written and Directed by Vincent Liota
-Featuring Robert Krulwich, Rick Rawlings, Heidi Julavits, Isabelle Corry
(Not Rated)- contains mild profanity