What's Left Behind

The Flat is a documentary from 2012. The filmmaker, Arnon Goldfinger, along with the rest of his family, enters his grandparents’ flat in Tel Aviv with the aim of clearing it out after his grandmother’s death at the age of 98. His grandparents were Zionists who left Germany prior to World War II and settled in Israel. The historical element of the film is interesting. He uncovers an unlikely friendship between his grandparents and a high-ranking Nazi and begins to question the sequence of events. But the personal aspects struck me as well. Goldfinger interviews his mother, his siblings, his cousins, and nobody seems to know much of anything about his grandparents. Where they were born, what his grandfather did for a living. And shockingly, what ever happened to his maternal grandmother, who remained in Germany. When he presses his mother for reasons, she only says that she never asked her parents about anything, and that she doesn’t know why. Goldfinger says “The third generation is asking questions. The second generation didn’t ask questions.”

We can all probably relate to this. Often, it isn’t until our elders are gone that we develop an interest in knowing them.

Goldfinger’s grandmother was a bit of a hoarder. Closets are full; cupboards are packed. They find boxes of gloves and jewelry, countless shoes, hats, letters dating back to the 1930s when they first arrived in Israel. In an attic crawlspace, Goldfinger brings down a stack of suitcases that reaches almost to the ceiling. One discouraging part of the film came when a “book expert” callously went through the grandparents’ cherished collection, most of which were in German. “Nobody reads these,” he said, gesturing to a row of Shakespeare. “Balzac? Nobody reads that anymore.” He threw the books into boxes and down from the higher shelves, dust rising in clouds.

I’m not much of a hoarder myself. I tend to throw most things away and yet, to see those books treated that way, to watch their belongings carried out in countless garbage bags—it was a bit depressing.

Can a life be pieced together by the flotsam remaining after someone has gone? It relates to my last blog post, when I talked about the things I have from my grandparents; it relates to The Qualities of Wood, in which the very same thing happens—third generation enlisted to go through an ancestor’s house and belongings. What would someone be able to tell about you by what you’ve chosen to keep? Are there things you have kept secret, items you’ve hidden, topics you’ve never discussed?

I highly recommend The Flat, which is about the human ability to create reality as much as it’s about anything else.