Stories We Tell (2013): A Life in Memory
By Nick Sansone
From a very young age, I have held a deep and profound fascination with stories from my family’s past. I would spend hours flipping through my parents’ old photo albums and scrapbooks from when they were kids and would ask them and my grandparents questions about their childhood and my great-grandfather, who cast a legendary shadow over my family (he had seventeen kids and lived to be one-hundred-and-one, dying three years before I was born). By the time I was ten, I was considered to be my family’s de facto “historian.”
This lifelong obsession with storytelling and family history is what first drew me to Sarah Polley’s personal documentary Stories We Tell (2013), which was released theatrically in the spring of 2013 and is currently streaming for free (and legally) on YouTube. A Canadian actress who crossed over into filmmaking with the Oscar-nominated drama Away from Her (2007), Polley had kept her personal life secret throughout most of her career, which made it all the more surprising when she decided to make a documentary film about her family, especially one that is as intimate and vulnerable as this. Even if you’ve never heard of Polley, by the end of this film you will almost certainly feel a deep connection with her and her family, as Stories We Tell (2013) manages to transcend both its genre and personal focus by offering genuinely compelling insights about family, truth, and memory that are both specific to Polley’s family and yet universal and relatable.
From the opening shots of Stories We Tell (2013), the audience is well aware of the vulnerability present in every inch of this documentary, as Polley’s main interview subjects (her father and siblings) are visibly uncomfortable and even questioning why she is turning her camera on them (her youngest sister even asks “who cares about our family?”). At first, it seems as though she is using this film to memorialize her mother, Diane, with the subjects sharing various things that they loved about her and, more specifically, how she came to meet her second husband and Polley’s father, Michael, during a play they both acted in. The subject’s stories then cover Michael and Diane’s marriage, through the birth of their three kids (including her unplanned pregnancy with Sarah Polley at age forty-two), and up through Diane’s death when Polley was eleven years old.
And it is after Diane’s death that Stories We Tell (2013) goes from being a melancholy look at Diane Polley’s life to a compelling mystery drama. The exact mystery at the center of this documentary will not be revealed in this review, as the best way to watch this film is knowing as little about it as possible, but seeing Polley piece together the different recollections and essentially embark on a journey of self-discovery through this film is incredibly enlightening and only emphasizes the bravery behind the project.
One of the key things Polley does from the beginning is she makes herself visible and audible both on-camera and when interviewing her subjects (both inside and outside her family). This not only amplifies the personal nature of what she’s doing with this film, but it also emphasizes the fact that everyone she’s interviewing (and she consciously refers to them as “storytellers”) has their own version of the events that have occurred within their family, and that no one has a full monopoly on “the truth,” whatever it may be.
In addition, because Diane Polley died long before this documentary was even conceived, the audience only sees glimpses of her in Super 8 home video footage that casts her as a mythical figure hovering over the family. The way Polley integrates this footage with her interviews and her father’s voiceover is nothing short of beautiful, as it furthers the idea that when one passes away without getting to tell their story, all that remains are the images and memories they’ve left behind for others to hold on to (an idea that’s brought out even more beautifully in a revelation toward the end of the film).
Another important thing Polley does here is play with the documentary structure. While many documentaries as varied as Dear Zachary (2008) and Nuts! (2016) have played with structure as a way of subverting the audience’s expectations, Stories We Tell (2013) plays with structure as a way of drawing the audience closer to Polley and allowing them to go on this journey with her and be surprised as she is surprised. This is perhaps the way it most transcends simply being a superbly-made documentary and becomes a wonderful example of cinematic art and storytelling. In an era in which many mainstream films have bland and conventional screenplays where one can see most everything coming a mile away, seeing a film that is genuinely unpredictable and exciting without really even trying is always a joy to see. And there are some twists and turns here that are equal parts surprising and inevitable, never feeling forced.
But perhaps the most emotionally affecting aspect of Stories We Tell (2013) — the part that ultimately forms this film’s heart — is the relationship between Polley and her father. The interviews and voiceover recording sessions she conducts with her father (after having her father write out his account of events as a story in third-person and record them as voiceover) form the backbone of this film’s structure, and provide it some of its most heartwarming moments, particularly toward the end when their relationship unexpectedly becomes stronger upon a revelation that Polley feared might cause friction between them. It allows the film to end on a sweet and touching coda that will undoubtedly leave the viewer feeling great long after the credits roll.
And on top of all that, this is just a very entertaining film all the way through. While it does touch on heavy themes and sensitive subjects that will surely be uncomfortable for some viewers, it is also very funny thanks to the fact that Sarah Polley’s family is just plain fun to be around. Hearing how her father and siblings (and even other friends of her mother’s) interact with her at various points during the interviews provides some much-needed levity throughout the film. And a cathartic moment of laughter at the very end serves as the perfect tag to Polley’s whole personal journey. It’s a beautiful thing to witness.
I was lucky enough to get to see this film for the first time on the opening night of the first-ever Chicago Critics Film Festival in 2013 with Polley herself in attendance. The Q&A that took place after that screening is still one of the best and most magical Q&As I’ve ever had the privilege to witness, and it made an already-great film that much deeper and more meaningful. And while I understand that a personal documentary film made by a Canadian actress/filmmaker whom many have not heard of is not many people’s first choice for a movie night at home, this is still a beautiful and remarkable piece of work from an essential voice in cinema that the world desperately needs to hear more of. Regardless of how one grew up or what one’s familial situation is now, all viewers will take something away from this film, and it might even cause them to reflect on their own family memories and stories.
Nick Sansone is a writer and aspiring filmmaker from Chicago. A recent summa cum laude graduate of DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts, he continues to study film independently and has appeared on different radio programs in the Chicagoland area to discuss contemporary cinema and the Academy Awards.