Objectified Teaches Us 'You Are What You Own'

That's a question asked by Rob Walker, who writes the Consumed column for The New York Times, at the very end of Objectified, director Gary Hustwit's brilliant documentary about industrial design. The film, which premiered here at South by Southwest to a packed house Saturday, is an examination of the objects that surround us -- the gadgets, furniture, cars, appliances and everyday things that we collect, consume and, ultimately, throw away.

You may not ever think about what kind of planning goes into designing simple, everyday things like toothbrushes, wastebaskets or hedge trimmers, but after seeing this movie, you will never look at any one of those objects the same way again.

Consider the lowly vegetable peeler -- in the film, we hear a story of the designer's wife who was complaining that the handle of her metal potato skinner was hurting her hands as she struggled to grip it tightly. He saw this as a golden opportunity to redesign the kitchen tool, and he set about designing dozens of handles of different sizes using different materials. In the end, a bicycle handlebar grip provided a flash of brilliance -- he slid the rubber grip onto the peeler's metal frame and he had his new, ergonomic design.

But the movie isn't all toothbrushes and vegetable peelers. Objectified takes us behind the scenes for the creation of such highly fetishized objects as the first laptop, the first iMac, the MacBook Air, the flip-screen mobile phone and the iPhone.

In the process of learning how these products were designed, we gain insight into the people who designed them.

Jonathan Ive, the man responsible for designing almost every Apple product since Steve Jobs' return to the company in the late 1990s, puts the relationship between the designer and the finished product into perspective.

“Every object, intentionally or not, speaks to who put it there," he says.

And we learn a lot about those people. There's no narrative voiceover in the film, just the 30 or so featured designers providing both content and context. The movie treats its interviewees with great reverence, and it makes sense, since these men and women are considered something close to rock stars in their field. They all live in lavish houses, dress in stylish and expensive clothes and lounge about on $2,000 divans. Some of them are larger than life -- the first shot of designer Karim Rashid, in his white suit, bright silk shirt and wrap-around purple shades, prompted many in the SXSW audience to bust out in guffaws.

These designers are truly inspired men and women, though. When they discuss the things they've made, they speak with a striking depth of emotion. Bill Moggridge, designer of the first laptop, quietly pauses and chuckles to himself when he shows off a simple tweak that prevents pencils from getting trapped in the screen's hinge. Naoto Fukasawa idly fondles his cellphone while he traces its final design to a childhood memory of cooking potatoes. These are special moments, captured keenly and quietly by the filmmaker.

It's this emotion, the humanizing aspect of design, which gives the film its real power. While watching close-ups of objects being touched, fondled, abused and fussed with by everyday humans on the street, you realize that it's our own personal relationships with our favorite objects which give them meaning and importance. Things like our old, beaten-up, first-gen iPods, our favorite creaky office chairs or our father's leather briefcase stimulate our imaginations and conjure memories, and that's what lends them power.

Objectified is director Hustwit's second feature. His documentary about typography, Helvetica, premiered at SXSW in 2007, and he's on a roll. Objectified is expertly shot and edited. Several fascinating sequences compress the complex design process -- from drawing board sketches to finished products -- at powerhouse shops like Ideo in California and Smart Design in New York. The soundtrack is a constant throb of contemplative electronica, and the film breezes through its 80-minute run time.