Stories We Tell

Having charmed and compelled so completely in her on-screen efforts to date, it would be easy to be unforgiving of Sarah Polley’s increasingly infrequent film appearances. In the likes of The Sweet Hereafter, eXistenZ, and My Life Without Me, she established abilities toiled at since her start as a child performer; broader parts in Go and Dawn of the Dead saw her poised for mainstream success. And then, apart from occasional roles, she vanished. For much of the past eight years, Polley has preferred to interact with film from the other side of the lens.

That her absence has wrought directorial efforts Away From Her and Take This Waltz proves her merit; Polley’s helming matches her acting abilities. Both features were met with acclaim, ensuring her next offering would be highly anticipated. Now her third film arrives, gifting audiences with both her auteur’s eye and her presence. In documentary Stories We Tell, she uncovers the vagaries of a most personal tale, whilst demonstrating the full extent of her filmmaking prowess.

Her premise is simple, as is the detective pursuit it sparks: having lost her mother Diane at the age of 11, Polley endeavours to compile a portrait of the woman missing from her trials and triumphs for the majority of her life. Static, to-camera interviews with family members furnish her investigation, alongside ample grainy home video footage, until their answers to her queries begets another quest – one that tests the ties of blood in its content, and toys with the way stories are told in its construction.

And yet, in moulding a mystery out of the building blocks of her identity, Stories We Tell proves a compelling and complex work. From the opening narration, provided by her father Michael based on his own memoirs, the messiness of making sense of inherited myths is revealed. As Polley follows a breadcrumb trail left by anecdotes and remembrances to the inimitable force that was her mother, the role of narrative in shaping our sense of self, and vice versa, is exposed in the most stunning of forms.

In a documentary that tests the meaning of the factual filmed medium, the revelations of Polley’s piecing together of her parents’ secrets will resonate long after viewing; however, the movie’s method is as immersive as its ideas, revelations and interactions.  Determined to craft an effort motivated by meaning, rather than a personality-fuelled exercise in vanity, she utilises every means at her disposal to gradually but gallantly tell a tale marked by both the melodramatic and the mundane, and ensure her audience understands the ways in which she is assembling and sharing the resulting story.

Of course, the details are best discovered by watching – as is true of all the best and brightest yarns. If Polley’s prolonged break from acting is in the service of her stellar efforts as a storyteller, proponents of her talent won’t be disappointed. In Stories We Tell, as well as provoking thought about the form and function of narrative, she offers a terrific and telling token of her time spent on both sides of the performer / creator divide.