Stories We Tell (2012) directed by Sarah Polley
In this film, Sarah Polley "interrogates" (her word) her father, her siblings, and others who knew her mother in an attempt to uncover the truth among the contradictory stories they tell about themselves, especially the relationship between Polley's mother and father. This is a film best left discovered without any preconceptions, but if you want a peek, watch this trailer, which gives you a flavor for the film without any spoilers:
In an interview with the NY Times, Polley describes her idea in making this film: "In every family there are discrepancies in terms of what the past was and what it means. And so I wanted to talk about that process and find that out, but also about why we have this need to tell stories, why it's so essential to us, why we have this desperate attachment to our versions of the past, and how do we allow for or do we allow for other versions of that"
So while this film is about Polley's family history, it holds universal truths about all families and the "stories we tell" Before seeing the film, you might want to consider the stories told within your own families.
In our discussion of the film, we mostly focused on its technique: how the story is told as opposed to the story itself. But let me start by looking at the story itself and the questions it poses.
Taken just as a documentary, the film seeks to create a portrait of a woman, but since that woman has been dead for 25 years, it does so by using standard documentary techniques: interviews with the people who knew her and archival footage in the form of home movies. It proceeds (at first) in linear fashion: Diana's personality, how she met Michael, what their marriage was like, her time in Montreal acting in a play, her pregnancy. Proceeding thus, the film asks numerous questions: What was Diana really like? Was she a happy-go-lucky bundle of energy, or was she wearing a mask? Was she really insecure and deeply troubled? Why did she marry Michael? What was her marriage like? Did she love Michael? Did Michael love her?
Since Diana is not able to speak for herself, the answers to these questions (except the last) are unknowable. And even though Michael can speak for himself, even the answer to the last question isn't really answered. Michael may not even know himself.
So the film adds another layer. It becomes a film about Polley's search for the (unknowable) truth. It rewinds the story to add revelations that change our perception of the straightforward events: Polley's ambiguous parentage, Diana's first marriage. In so doing, it becomes a documentary about the making of a documentary. At this level, the film asks a number of more philosophical questions: How do we construct stories about ourselves? Why do we tell stories at all? How do we know what is true? Is there any one truth, or do we all construct our own versions of the truth?
The answers to these questions is even more contradictory than the answers to the first set of questions. Harry, for one, believes there is one truth and, in this case, he knows it. Michael is far less certain that he knows anything, even his own truth.
Those who left before the credits rolled missed one more layer: none of the home movies in the film is "real." They all use actors and cleverly amateurish camerawork to mimic the home movies that might have been. Some in our audience felt cheated by this revelation. On the other hand, I feel it deepens the movie. It's the only movie I can recall in which the credits themselves changed my perception of the movie. It poses a whole new set of questions: What is a documentary? Is a documentary, just as the stories we tell, just one version of many possible truths? Is it ethical to reconstruct the past without telling the audience?
Of course, Polley does tell the audience. She hints at it during the film, but only reveals it in the credits. Had this been a mere trick, the film might not be worth re-seeing. But I have seen it three times now, and I find the home movie footage to be just as haunting, even knowing that the images are not "real." For what Polley has done is give us the images of the past as she imagines them to have been. She uses them to construct her version of the truth.
In one sense, then, the film is about the impossibility of knowing the past. As philosopher Walter Benjamin put it, "The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again."