Starring: Sarah Polley, Michael Polley, Diane Polley, John Buchan, Susy Buchan, Geoff Bowes, Cathy Gulkin, Harry Gulkin, Anne Tait, Mort Ransen, Rebecca Jenkins.
Directed by: Sarah Polley
Running time: 109 minutes
Parental guidance: coarse language, tobacco use
Five out of five stars
We all want to be the hero of our own story ? which means we all have to invent the narrative as we go along, carefully crafting the details of each personal encounter to edify our identity.
For this reason, no two people will share the same exact version of the same exact event, and every life story will have several interpretations and myriad meanings.
It can be a frustrating fact of life and set off a soap opera of misunderstandings among family, friends and frenemies, but it can also be a creative tool because ambiguity opens the door to a whole new mental frontier, and creates enough space for personal recreation.
Sarah Polley doesn?t just understand this slippery sense of personal truth, she opens a throbbing vein of her own history in the stunning new documentary Stories We Tell.
Crafted over a period of five years in near-complete secrecy, the film falls under the banner of autobiography because it features Polley on camera talking about her own life with members of her real family.
Yet, Stories We Tell often feels more like a dramatic suspense saga, or even a gothic romance, more than a movie about Sarah Polley because even though she sits at the very centre of the frame, this is really a biographical portrait of a ghost.
Diane Polley, Sarah Polley?s mother, died of cancer when Sarah was 11 years old ? and she took a rather big secret with her to the grave: Little Sarah was the product of an affair she had while working on a play in Montreal.
The man little Sarah called Dad was not her biological father, and even though family members teased her about her different looks and diminutive stature for years, when the truth came out, the entire Polley clan was in turmoil as it was forced to re-evaluate the story of the missing matriarch.
Making things even more desperate: The press was already itching to write the story before her Dad even knew the truth, forcing Polley to take a pro-active stance on the whole affair.
After all, if anyone had ownership of her story, it was her, and if anyone was going to tell it, and tell it properly, it could only be Sarah Polley herself.
The film?s first footfall establishes Polley?s turf as she introduces us to her entire family, and asks them to tell the story in their own words. She is the one calling the shots. She is the one sitting behind the mixing board. She is the one conducting the interviews.
Polley asserts herself as director and subject in the same breath, yet very quickly this cunning cinematic talent also acknowledges the subjectivity of the entire exercise.
As she focuses the lens on her loved ones, each one immediately becomes self-conscious and begins apologizing. They don?t know where to begin. They don?t know how much to say. They don?t feel right talking about it on camera.
Polley knows this will be a voyage with conflicting testimony and endless booby-traps of ego, but with a true creator?s courage, she casts off into the stormy seas of her own past seeking the wreckage of truth.
The resulting odyssey is filled with soul-rocking revelations.
We not only learn the truth of her paternal roots, we get an entire flashback sequence recreated for the cameras using actors ? most notably Rebecca Jenkins, who takes on the ephemeral spirit of Polley?s mom, Diane, and brings the ghost to life.
Dramatic recreation can feel like a total device when used as visual filler or as literal illustration, but Polley uses it with specific purpose as it draws our attention to the notion of cinema itself.
At first, the recreations are not announced and feel very verit?. The dreamy scenes of Montreal in winter and ?70s-era brasseries suggest the reverie of nostalgia, and how truth starts to fragment as the years pass, leaving nothing but the dancing grain of aging celluloid.
These visuals are matched in the narration, delivered by everyone involved from their own perspective, and in their own words. The most moving testimony comes from Polley?s Dad, Michael Polley, a gifted writer who put his own creative life on hold to raise a family.
Michael Polley?s honesty is deeply moving, but it?s his words that will make you cry. In looking back at his own life with all this new knowledge, the Polley patriarch is forced to rewrite his own narrative ? without assuming the role of de facto protagonist.
His courage in the face of this surreal challenge is undeniably heroic because he?s disarmingly honest about his own flaws and shortcomings. He?s also unfathomably charitable and loving, in addition to being a beautiful writer.
Not everyone in the film emerges with as much humanity or as much beauty, but we only need one hero to feel satisfied, and Polley delivers an inspiring example.
In fact, she delivers everything a moviegoer could ever hope for by ensuring the film has its fair share of funny moments as well as heartfelt grief. Yet, the biggest victory is Polley?s place in her own frame because while this is a movie about her life, she hands it over to others ? standing behind the camera as silent storyteller.
This wasn?t just incredibly brave, it?s a stroke of artistic genius because it lets the film reflect back on itself in the final act as she breaks frame, and shows us the great wizard behind the curtain.
We?re all, it seems, just a projection of self ? a flickering image on a dancing puff of smoke for others to inhale or wave away, leaving nothing but the loose impressions of a life as remembered by those who love us.
Source: http://o.canada.com/2012/10/19/stories-we-tell/
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