Stories We Tell

I'm still not quite sure what to make of Stories We Tell. It was sold to me as an award-winning attractive-looking film with a profound message about family and I'm not completely convinced that this is what I found.

Perhaps the biggest hindrance for me was the absence of any description as to who each contributor was. All that we as an audience are given, is a single name which does not help us at all when trying to discover the relationships between the people featured. I realised why this was necessary towards the end of the film but I feel that it made it quite hard to follow in the early stages. There are still two female contributors I have no idea about.

Michael Polley

The two different filming locations of Michael Polley, our director's father, did not help us out either. In both shots, one in recording studio and another at the kitchen table, he looked completely different and it took me a good 40mins to decide that it was in fact the same man. So for a long while I was sat thinking to myself, 'how many dads does this girl have?'.

From confusion to illusion - I am also undecided on the effectiveness of "archive" within the film. The recreation of the past, to create a visual version of the mother we never get to meet, is almost a little too fabricated. There are moments where we believe that it's real, with her mother applying make-up in the mirror and winking to the camera etc. Here, the illusion works.

Michael Polley

However, the recreation of those defining moments, like when Harry tells Sarah that he is in fact, her father, just seemed false. We cannot recreate our instinctive reactions to these moments and I would much rather have looked into the eyes of Sarah or Harry retelling the story. The same is so for when Sarah tells this information to her father, Michael, I would much rather have witnessed his own raw emotions in telling the story, than seeing it falsely replicated. I wanted to see what it meant to him to see the daughter he'd raised, become the daughter of another man.

Despite this, the behind the scenes shots and recreated reels of the past were attractive in style, filmed in 16mm film and upholding the quirky, showbiz edge that seemed to so deeply define their mother. I was just not completely sure about the use of them all within the same documentary.

Sarah Polley & biological father Harry

It is hard to condemn the film completely, although we aren't quite sure whose documentary this is, whose story it's telling, it does hold some quality. It holds some messages that we can relate to. For example, when Michael tells Sarah that it does not matter if she is not biologically his, he still loves her. It remind us all that family is not necessarily the ones that share our DNA, it's not that simple. There is more to family than blood.

Sarah Polley - writer/director

We watch a family held together by the memory of their mother and the stories that they tell about are the things that keep her memory alive - that at least comes through in the documentary. Director Sarah Polley encourages a candid response from her contributors but in this almost disengages them from the raw emotion of each revelation. I felt a little let-down that I did not get to witness these revelations first hand and instead watched a reconstruction of that scene, albeit filmed attractively. I wanted to see them being cheated, being loved, feeling loss and only once was I given this opportunity. It's all very well putting on a brave face, stiff upper lip and all that, but it did not make for a particularly compelling story.

Overall, I suppose I like the way the film made me think and I suppose, I respect its ambition in defying genre as a documentary. It may not have been the beautiful story I envisaged but it tried and succeeded in many other areas. The soundtrack was well-chosen and story an engaging one at times. It is just a shame that most of my concentration went on working out who was who and why no-one seemed to care that at least three men had slept with our leading lady at the same time. I'm aware that my opinion is a rare one and many behold Stories We Tell as a masterpiece of its time. I'd like to say I too found a profound message about family within the film, I just happen to disagree.