Jess Rogers
How do you know when you’re home? Is it where you hang your hat? Is it just a feeling you get that makes you feel safe? What do you NEED to make a house your home? These are all questions Christopher Smith and Merete Mueller explore in their documentary TINY: A STORY ABOUT LIVING SMALL. It make me think a lot about how do I know that I’m home – what ties me to the small area of the world that I call my home. Their exploration of the idea of home takes the viewer in a few unexpected directions, mostly very small.
Chris Smith grew up an army brat and moved around a lot, and has finally found a spot in the world that he feels compelled to return to, the vistas of Colorado, but he needs a structure to live in and decides to build it himself, fulfilling a childhood dream to find “home”. He has the summer off, and just enough money to start building a “tiny” house (vaguely defined as under 200 square feet). While his journey begins with only the hubris of ignorance – even he is willing to admit he didn’t know what he was doing and it could have been a huge failure. To avoid building codes, tiny houses must be built on wheels to be deemed temporary structures (minimum house sizes are around 600 square feet), so Chris gets a trailer and begins work in May, planning to be done in August. After the first full day of construction, he knows that’s a pipe dream, but we do get to see him sticking with the idea and building throughout.
Thankfully, this documentary is only peripherally about actually building the house – you can see those how-to videos on YouTube. Instead, it’s about what it means to create a home, and why, for some people, living smaller can be a good thing. One of the best elements of the film is seeing all the people different ways they have attempted to live smaller. Some are shown just in pictures in their tiny houses (always listed with their square footage), and others give interviews about why it works for them. One couple wanted to get out of debt and not be forced to work jobs they hated only to have money to live in a big house. Another woman wanted less space to clean and take care of, while others are solely environmentally themed reasons. Which led to one of the reasons I really liked this film.
Many documentaries that talk about an idea that isn’t main stream – though this concept is becoming popular, I think it’s still on the fringe – can come across as proselytizing for their cause. They can seem fanatical about their ideas and are often hard to engage with – you only watch to see the weirdos. However, Chris and his girlfriend Merete anchor this film in a kind of innocence. They are trying out a new idea that may or may not work. And throughout the film we do see ways the idea has played out for the positive for others. They even say that it’s not for everyone – most “housers” are single or a couple who choose it for specific reasons. But, they say, everyone can make their own changes to live with a smaller impact. Being more conscious of your choices is a big part of what it means to live in a tiny space. You have to think about where everything goes, and what things you can have and what you might be able to do without. This comes across as the main point of this film, just being more conscious of your living choices.
By the end, Chris has finished his tiny house (not without problems) and has moved it to his plot of land. This would be my only criticism of the film is that we don’t find out if Chris found his “home”. But if the point of the film is really about learning to live with your conscious choices, I think we can easily see that “home” is whatever you make it to be. And Chris did.
TINY: A STORY ABOUT LIVING SMALL is playing tomorrow Sunday April 28 – 9:15 at TIFF Bell Lightbox, Monday April 29 – 4pm at Scotiabank Theatre, and Sunday May 5 – 1:30pm at The Revue. (official website)