STORIES WE TELL

STORIES WE TELL Review

By Darin Skaggs

     A documentary can be about many things.  It can be about Disneyland or the history of Monopoly or what is wrong with our food.  Those are good and all but the great, amazing docs are the ones that are just about people.  No facts.  No information. Just people living their lives.  Sarah Polley’s new film Stories We Tell is a film about Polley’s family.

     The film starts out about Sarah’s mother, Diane Polley who had passed years earlier.  While Sarah was conducting interviews with family and friends of her mother she finds out startling life changing news.  She then shows the interview of everyone’s thoughts and feelings about the situation.

     Her news is life changing, her whole world, it should seem, be crashing around her but she does not seem sad she seems excited at the news.  Other characters who should be affected by the news are inspired.  They start to write a story about it, Sarah makes the documentary about it and others say it affected the whole 11family’s view of family in general.

     Polley, who directed a few other fictional films, makes this one her own with its own style.  She hires actors to reenact things from her past.  She uses a Super 8 camera that makes it look like old home video footage.  It is a brilliant choice and is really effective during the narration.  Speaking of the narrator, Sarah chooses her father to do the narration with a piece he wrote for the film.  She makes other fine choices including her own voice asking her dad to redo takes, including a quote that says that the truth will not be told because Sarah gets to choose what part of the interview makes it in the documentary. 

     The doc is insightful and says a lot about forgiving people for making mistakes.  It really makes you think about what would happen if your family made different choices in their life and where you would be because of it.  It truly is a great documentary with a lot of heart.