My Mother's Garden 2 p.m. at AFI Silver. Also at 4 p.m. Sunday, June 22, at Round House Theatre.
A fascinating and troubling documentary on hoarding disorder, My Mother’s Garden is the story of Eugenia Lester, whose home in the San Fernando Valley is so thick with clutter that the authorities are preparing to seize it. In the film’s early scenes, director Cynthia Lester watches her mom’s compulsion play out away from the house—she heads to dollar stores and garage sales, loading up on gewgaws and clothes that don’t fit her, and sorts recycling with a vigor that would make Al Gore cheer. That is, if Eugenia’s damage weren’t so painfully obvious: The house, when we finally enter it, is a tragedy, full of clutter, filth, and dead rats. Cynthia tasks her brothers with cleaning the place while she takes Mom to New York for a while, and though there are plenty of stomach-turning shots of the Stygian home being cleaned out one shovelful at a time, Cynthia wisely centers on Eugenia, who in her calmer moments is friendly, flirty, and sweet-tempered. Hoarding disorder is a poorly understood illness (from which 2 million Americans suffer, according to the film), and though Eugenia’s eventual solution isn’t exactly transcendent, relatively speaking it qualifies as a happy ending. —MA
Jun. 13 - 19, 2008 (Vol. 28, #24)
Comments
4:26 am
the children of eugenia had (have ) no understanding at all of compulsive hoarding. they deceived their own mother, gutted her house behind her back, and expected this woman to be grateful to them for not even letting her sort through one box of her own possessions! and the daughter, cynthia, shamelessly promotes her own film career with this film. this film will just condone more forced interventions, which everyone knows will not help hoarders.
the type of "cleaning up" these people did and the disgust they felt for their own mother de-humanized her and it was cruel and duplicitious. this movie does a great disservice. it is NOT educational, does not correctly portray compassionate ways to help a hoarder, and does not even mention cognitive therapy and working slowly and allowing the hoarder to make decisions for herself. eugenia even asked that her children help her and work with her slowly. not one person, including her own children, was willing to do this or find somebody who would.
poor eugenia, when faced with the shock of seeing her home, was catapulted into a psychotic break and deep despair. then cynthia had the nerve to film her sobbing on the floor. how heartless. how cruel. how utterly vengeful in an unconscious way.
two thumbs down to this film! make a film that reflects the work of doctors tolin, frost, and steketee, and show this film as how to NOT go about treating hoarding compulsion.