Pierre Drieu La Rochelle

Foreign Objects - Large

My mom awoke one pre-dawn morning in 1985 and noticed a sliver of light beneath my older sister’s door. Knowing that none of her three kids were morning people she lightly knocked before turning the knob to find her firstborn laying unconscious on the floor, dark red blood seeping from her wrists and soaking into the carpet. She immediately went to compress the wounds while yelling for my father to call 911. An ambulance arrived, and my sister was rushed to the hospital. I slept through all of it one floor below. The depression that led to my sister’s suicide attempt and that continued to haunt my family for years to come was little more than a frustrating embarrassment for my preteen self heading into the most formative, socially judgmental time of my life. I didn’t understand what she was experiencing and instead saw it as selfish, spiteful behavior on her part. I was an indifferent asshole who alternately blamed her for future family troubles or ignored her wholesale as if I was still asleep to her difficulties. It was valuable time lost that should have been spent being a better brother. Those events have surfaced in my memories now and again over the past two decades, but it took a movie for me to come as close as possible to understanding what she was going through all those years ago. Oslo, August 31st, and in particular its powerfully affecting lead performance by Anders Danielsen Lie, explores with devastating effect […]

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published: 12.23.2014
published: 12.22.2014
published: 12.19.2014

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