Why is it that we talk and talk, or at least I certainly do, without somehow conveying what we’re really like?
Stories We Tell
(2012)
(SPOILERS) Sarah Polley has traversed from child star to
leading lady to director. For now at least, she seems settled in the latter
mode. Given her lifelong immersion in the performing arts, it should come as no
surprise that her family background is theatrical. This background informs her
third feature, ostensibly a documentary on her mother’s eventful but short life
but with the broader remit of addressing the nature of storytelling, memory and
perspective. If each person recalls someone or something differently, can any
single truth be divined? Or is the past in a state of perpetual, subjective
flux?
Stories We Tell
revolves around family secrets, mysteries, perceptions and assumptions relating
to Polley’s parents. Polley’s mother died in 1990, when Sarah as 11, and her portrait
is sketched through recollections, archive footage and reconstructions (the
last of these, I will come on to). The first 45 minutes or so of Stories is keenly judged, unhurriedly
reeling out the narrative hook of a relationship between two very different people.
One (Michael Polley) is private and contained while the other (Diane Polley) is
vivacious and sociable. While the details of recall may vary, it is noticeable how
the picture of Diane is largely consistent (so undermining, at least partially,
one of the tenets of the piece). Central to the story in question is the
discovery that the longstanding family joke, in which Sarah is not in fact Michael’s
daughter, is true. Polley presents this as an entertaining piece of detective
work, in which many of the parties concerned give their tuppence worth before she
stages the big reveal. Interweaved are additional insights that could easily branch
off into full narratives of their own (Diane’s first marriage, which produced
two half siblings of Sarah’s, ended in a divorce that made the front pages of
Canadian newspapers).
Polley has the disposition of the pseudo-intellectual
who can't quite perceive the way her own creative egocentricity overwhelms her
subject matter. One can sense the outspoken and politically
agitated Polley of yesteryear in this approach. She carries the assumption of importance
and significance that can, at times, border on the precious. When she muses
aloud over why she is making this documentary, exposing her family’s life and
secrets to a broader audience, the act is one of false modesty. I suspect there
are two reasons why she has broadcast this family history. One is of the
broadest order, and it’s why her wider family and friends, most of them from
and in the artistic world, take part; as a performer, she desires attention and
recognition.
But there’s another, stronger motivation that, perversely,
manifests itself most clearly after the documentary has lost its initial
momentum. During the first half,
inconsistencies spring up, but they tend to be mistaken conclusions or
emotional blind spots (how aware each was about how ill their mother was, for
example), rather than anything to dent the generally united picture we develop
of Diane. Later, when Polley probes her subjects about whether the truth of
things can ever be reached, it seems like a question hiding the elephant in the
room. There doesn’t really seem much left to “solve” in respect of her mother.
Her sister suggests that, with multiple perspectives, one can never get to the
point of having figured things out, yet the areas left for discussion are
emotional minutiae. So it is in biological father Harry’s slightly pathetic
attempt to possess the memory of Diane for his own ends that the true core of
the film is announced. He pronounces that he is uncomfortable with Polley’s
approach of giving everyone equal weight; only two people know the truth, and
one of them is no longer around.
Couch this in terms of the involvement of the father who
raised her, and the picture becomes clearer. From the beginning, Michael is
seen in a recording studio reciting his memoir of Diane, a script that will
conclude with Polley telling her father the truth about her mother and Harold. Michael
felt impelled to set this all down in writing almost as soon as Sarah told him
(the tidiest part of this tale is how the revelations provoke Michael into writing
again, an activity Diane had unsuccessfully encouraged him to pursue). Then we learn
Polley reacted angrily on being informed Harold intended to publish his own
memoir concerning his relationship with Diane. So how better to divest them of
this claim than to make a film encompassing both, tearing attention from either
as the heart or pulse of the story? Encouraging Michael to dictate his story
has the appearance of generosity, but actually allows Polley to control the
material. Michael seems relatively aware and magnanimous about such matters,
noting how the “truth” ends up in Polley’s hands as she decides what to keep
through the process of editing (although he is as capable of scoring points
through apparent humility; his comment that he pities Harry, who didn’t get
Diane and didn’t see Sarah grow up, is close to sounding like “the poor, sad
sap”).
Each of the main protagonists has a proprietorial aspect to
the material. And Polley, as the most prominent and “powerful”, wins the battle
in an almost passive-aggressive manner. She becomes the child disguising her
cries for attention under the robes of intellectual discourse. To an extent
then Harold, who comes out worst, is right to be wary of the effect of Polley’s
doc, although obviously not for the reasons he states. This is her version of the different versions of
her mother. One gets the impression that, if she hadn’t finally called time out
there would have been an infinite regression, dissecting the dissection of the
meaning of subjective recollection. Ultimately the question is focussed on to
the point of over-ripeness, but it is clear that she has divested her fathers
of possession of her mother, even appropriating her father’s memoir and gutting
it of its strongest elements. It is his reminiscence through her prism; her cajoling
and call for retakes.
The question arises, then, of whether Polley has the honesty
about or the clarity to meet her philosophical pretext. There’s a continued
sense that she isn’t the right person to self-edit, that she over-extends her
subject when she should be honing it, and that when she comes to address her
themes directly she should actually have tackled them indirectly, so they
become plain through the talking heads. Instead, we experience a series of
endings so bewildering as to make The Return
of the King look inadequate; it becomes plain that she could easily have
shaved 20 minutes off the picture. And yet this ultimate lack of distance also
makes the film more interesting in retrospect. It becomes as much to do with
what it tells us about its director as it does its subject(s) and theme(s).
With regard to the use of actors in the home movie footage
(or, at least, about half of it) I have to raise my hand and say I didn’t
realise. I questioned the volume and convenience of available footage, as it
seemed unlikely that even a family of luvvies would be so prodigious in
recording their lives, but I guess I was more involved with the themes than
visuals; indeed, the “found” footage is so repetitive that one tunes out after
a while. Ironically, the only the material I really questioned was the flimsy
restaging of Polley’s reality-adjusting meeting with Harold. Perhaps the
amateurishness was intentional, so as to add verisimilitude to the not-really
home movie recordings. Retracing my steps, I realised that when the overt reveals
occur (Polley on set with her period parents), 90 minutes in, Polley has
already over-extended and indulged her subject matter. While there remain
elements of interest there visuals no longer hold sway, and the overt dissection
takes over. Or maybe I’m just announcing my terrible observation skills. I
don’t feel duped by this realisation though (which came with the credits); as a
thematic choice it’s a coherent one. At least, it’s coherent with the announced theme.
Stories We Tell is
interesting for the way the elements Polley doesn’t address make the picture
more layered and interesting, in spite of her attempt to analyse her subject to
death,. The real problem here is the absence of a strong-minded producer or
hard-hitting editor willing to say, “That’s enough, Sarah”. Prune it a bit, and
develop that extra bit of distance so you consciously address your position as
the daughter vying for dominance. The final words, given to the man everyone
thought might be Sarah’s father (but wasn’t) would be perfect for the film
Polley set out to make (“We did sleep
together once”, an ironic invitation to reconsider the firm opinions that
may have been formed), but by that point it has become something else.
***1/2
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