The Collection by Daniela

Jonathan is a Jewish American young man who, after visiting his dying grandmother, received a blurred photo on which his young grandfather was standing with a beautiful young blond woman in a peaceful field. In the back of the photo there was a handwritten note: "Augustine and me. Trachimbrod. 1940". From then, Jonathan started his complicated trip to find Augustine, the woman who helped his grandfather to leave the Ukraine in the Second World War.
Jonathan is a collector; he keeps different objects related with his family story. When his grandmother died, he had a vivid memory about how he got his first object for the collection. When he was a little child, he grandfather died in the same white and luminous bedroom. Next to the bed there was a white nightstand, with his grandfather's old glasses, the leather wallet and a lovely ancient pendant. Jonathan took the transparent and yellowish pendant which had a tiny cricket inside. Then, in the kitchen, he looked for a zip bag and carefully put the pendant in there. Later he went to his bedroom. At the moment that Jonathan opened the bedroom door, his memories faded and now he was in front of his "family wall".
From my point of view, this is one of the most fascinating images from the movie. The scene seems like an amazing installation art. The large light yellow wall is completely covered with diverse objects inside translucent zip bags. In the top part of wall there are five framed photographs. Each photo is a portrait of Jonathan's relatives and at the bottom of each photo are their names and birth dates. The composition is extremely impressive and the warm light through the window generates a special atmosphere in the room, almost a magic dream.
When Jonathan comes into the bedroom, he watches astounding his huge collection. In his right hand he has his grandmother's spotless dentures in a bag that he puts it on the wall with a tiny tack below his grandmother's photo. Around, there are other grandmother's objects into bags that Jonathan has collected through the years: a gray scarf, a ten of clubs card, an old envelope with red, green and black stamps. Each bag has a white sticker with the year and month in which the object was collected. That system are on objects of whole wall and each object has been placed around the photo of its owner.
As a three-dimensional family album, the Jonathan's wall compiles and contains memories and experiences of his relatives in the objects and allows to know them in a different way. Through small pink pills, a disgusting wishbone chicken, a well-worn photo, a squashed tape, an ancient oxidized key and a pale check book; it is possible to know part of Sam's life, a gentle man with gray hair and big black glasses. Next to Sam' objects it is Carol's photo, around there is an insulin syringe, a small green cassette, a blurred photo and one dollar of 1984. In the collection also there is a black feather, a crumpled love note, a little handcrafted toy and yellowy dental appliance of Marty. Finally they are Michael's objects, balloons, a nice bib, a nauseating thing with toadstools of 1992, a used condom and a diskette with a drawing of a woman.
Opposite the "family wall" there is a tidy desk with some folders and a small lamp. On the wall there is a likeable photo of Safran Foer, Jonathan's grandfather. Below of the photo, there is a only object, completely alone, the pendant with cricket. Jonathan takes out the pendant from the zip bag and looks the object thoroughly. Then he watches the photo that his grandmother gave him and discovers something amazing; Augustine, the woman in the photo has exactly the same pendant. He makes a decision to start his rigid research to find Trachimbrod and that enigmatic woman.