The Art of Downsizing

The Art of Downsizing hits close to home. A few years ago I helped my mum in her mid-eighties to scale down in anticipation of the next decade. We did it while my dad was out of town.

Much like Kathleen, Barb and Bill, this was something that had been churning in my mum’s mind for some time. We dropped off bags at the Sally Ann and cleaned out the garage.

We took a digital tour of possible retirement destinations and even did the math on a place that others from my mum’s community were targeting. That was tough. For a day we puttered around in relative silence as we took in the fact that the places she preferred were unaffordable.

Back in the day (long before Marie Kondo!) I had produced a series about people and their possessions from the point-of-view of a personal organizer. What I learned was that no matter how smooth you think things are going, there’s always a ‘hot-spot’ that’s going to stop you in your tracks.

Our hot spot was my mum’s harmonium – it harbored the memory of my family’s migration from India to Kenya before branching out across the UK, Germany, the US and Canada. The songs played on that harmonium were our legacy from a soundtrack that hadn’t been recorded, that carried our history and tied us all together. It felt like losing this integral part of our lives would be like losing a family member.

And then we found a young man from my mum’s community who composes fusion music that combines songs from my grandmother’s generation with new compositions. He even knew a song from Zanzibar that combines Gujurati and Swahili. My mum could never play the harmonium again, that we knew – and giving it away to a good home was the right thing to do.

The young man came over with his dad. Rush hour was looming but they stayed for tea and snacks. In Kenya and in India there’s a lot of respect for older people and their respect for my mum and for the history of this particular harmonium fed our souls and put our fears to rest.

The Art of Downsizing, like most of my work, starts light and goes deep. It's predicated on the intimate relationships I established with Bill, Barb and Kathleen, three seniors who allowed me to film their intensely private struggles to prepare for their final years on their own terms. Similarly, for 100 and Counting: Secrets to a Long Life, I spent many teatimes in the iconic living room where the matriarch and patriarch of a large clan held court. As with all my films, I spoke to the characters and got to know their family and friends, constantly searching for that ‘hot spot' and taking the time to ‘feel’ the subject, till I understood the larger meaning behind small gestures. The pay-off was twenty seven million views on facebook and messages from all corners of the world.

I go to these lengths to establish intimacy because I believe that the ultimate expression of strength is an ability to feel and pass through vulnerability. Somewhere in that shadow play between vulnerability and strength, the true magic of cinema surfaces and the emotional power of verite allows us to see ourselves as it makes itself known.