Stories We Tell made me look within—and around—at indeed, the stories we write and craft to explain our lives. As Sarah Polley explores her family and its secrets in this documentary she directs, so too, surely, does the audience. How would your family explain the story of your life? How would you and your siblings tell the stories of your parents’ lives? What stories do your friends use? Although Polley focuses on her own history as she explores whether her father is actually her biological father, I suspect more than just this member of the audience reflected on our own stories—and how they might be told.
Admittedly, part way through the film, a dupe is revealed. And duped, I felt. Still, I can appreciate too the need for the shots and the need to help the audience feel a part of the past. Still, we were duped. (And apparently, I’m still a bit bitter about that, eh?) (Then again, how interesting that the show highlighted before this featured film included this revelation: “Documentaries are not adult education” (discussing a critic’s dislike of The Act of Killing (which I’m dreadfully disappointed I’ll miss during its one-night screening here in Jax)).)
In spite of the dupe, Polley does a brilliant job of exposing how differently we see our lives than others who are involved, even if those differences are sometimes only subtle. In discussing the film afterward, I defended a few decisions made by those telling stories—or by Polley’s choice at editing. Even in a documentary, some things are private. And it’s okay when they stay so. For how we write and tell those stories is not always meant for an audience on such a grand scale. Sometimes those stories we write and tell are meant for no more than the audience within each of us.
The substance of the film was summed up nicely with this Neruda quote late in the film: “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” As soon as it was said, it resonated with me. Ah, but what was perhaps most intriguing to me was in trying to recall that quote just an hour after the film, several fellow movie-goers had “life” replacing “love” and “memories” replacing “forgetting.” More interesting, personally, is that although I had the first half of the quote correct, I inserted “forgiveness” as the subject in the latter as I tried to recall the quote from memory.
As telling as that seems to be to me, I wonder how I’m telling that part of my story right now. . . .