Sarah Polley's 2013 Stories We Tell

As Margaret Atwood stated, “In the end, we’ll all become stories”. Although this quote can be translated as broad and obvious, there is a profound significance it carries in all lives because as stories accumulate and we reflect on them, they begin to define us. Sarah Polley’s 2013 Stories We Tell begins directly with Sarah Polley presenting her storytellers, who are all part of the family. Her father Micheal, her brothers, and her sisters. She simply asks her family to talk about, from the beginning, the story of their mother Diane. With a set of wide and medium shots in each family members house, the audience gets the sense that the stories are going to reveal personal and maybe even shocking revelations about their memories. Everyone has

their own way of telling what ends up being the same common facts about Diane, but it’s how each person uniquely tells the story that is most interesting. Whether filled with pleasure, sorrow, and even regret, each person describes Diane’s life differently, which reveals that how one is remembered or even currently portrayed is established through the memories of others, mysteries and all. Stories We Tell successfully investigates the indefinable essence of what is considered true and how that relates to memory and ultimately how stories represent us individually and collectively. Sarah Polley illustrates this through the blending of intimate interviews and high quality 8 mm film displaying family memories.
The documentary begins with director Sarah Polly asking each subject "tell the story from the beginning until now” and to open up about their perspective on the story of Diane.

Most importantly, she wants her subjects to be honest on their perspective of the issue at hand. The film starts out with details of the marriage of Sarah's dad Michael and mom Diane. Each sibling describes Diane as exciting and Michael as more mellow. Each family member then continues describing the in’s and out’s of Diane’s family, life, and acting. Each sibling and her dad explain the family joke relating to the issue that has formed when Sarah was a teen. Polley doesn’t favor one subject over others because the film is also about making a film, and reading into how people interact with the

memory.
The beauty of Stories We Tell is that Sarah Polley lets the jumble and confusion of the story remain.

She does so because the film itself represents the reality of a normal, messy life. Critics have claimed that by having a variety of family members answer challenging questions, the film quilts together the memories of each person into a, as Guy London explains it, “a startling series of reveals”. She choses to interview people who are closest to the story of how Diane and Micheal met, which includes, Polley’s siblings, and other relatives. The film beings with closely knit clips of each family describing how they are nervous in unique ways. Once Polley finally tells her subjects to “tell the entire story from start to finish”, they are all baffled and one family member even says, “who even cares about our family”. Polley choses to show these clips to connect the audience to the story because introducing the family as an ordinary family that average people “wont care about” will get Polley’s point across that stories are what represent all families. Critics has also mentioned that by including a variation of wide shots that occasionally even show parts of filmmaking, like the mic, medium shots of the subject on their own couch or chair, and close shots that usual reveal the, “supportive but understandably bemused testimonies”. These variety of shots make the atmosphere authentic because having the mic in the shot normally considered a mistake, and long shots of people

crying or smoking is traditionally cut out of movies. Polley is showing all of this to remind the audience that story telling itself tangled, and is never quite perfect.
As Polley interviews her family members the audience can still feel her presence in the background, as she laughs and comments on subjects answers, as she pieces together each story.
Polley combines her father as a interviewee and a narrator, by doing so she is bringing the ultimate focus to Diane. With a mix of both the diegetic sounds of each interviewee and the non-diegetic sounds of the nostalgic music represents Diane’s trapped past both contributes to Polley’s vision that is “deceptively artful in its orchestration”. Each family member has their own way of explaining what could have been and Polley carefully choses the order in which this is shown but keeps it artfully tangled to depict her uncertainty. Polley ties the interviews together, but doesn’t give the audience a distinct answer, too show the reality of the situation and the human nature to want to create a story to make sense of life, and how that brings us together. I think by including little moments where the mic shows, someone stops to wipe a tear, or smoke a cigarette artfully displays Polleys interest in showing the funny, and real moments that every human fluctuates through, and makes the documentary beautiful.