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Throughout her already long and impressive career, young Canadian writer/director/actress Sarah Polley has worked on both sides of the camera. But in her first documentary, Stories We Tell, she chooses to tell a story not about an elderly couple battling a debilitating disease or a science experiment gone horribly wrong but about…herself.
In Stories We Tell, Polley puts her showbiz family in front of the camera to explain a family mystery that has unfolded throughout the years. Polley places most of the focus on her late mother, Diane, an outgoing actress. She uses her father and four siblings to tell the story of how Diane met and fell in love with Michael Polley—another actor—and how they started a family together. Together with close friends and acquaintances, the family tells a story of the ups and downs of marriage, of love and loss, and of a secret that remained hidden for many years—until Sarah started searching for answers about her past.
At one point in Stories We Tell, Polley admits that she’s not sure of the film’s purpose; she doesn’t know whether it’s something she needed to do for herself or something that she’d eventually share with audiences. That’s pretty clear throughout the film—because it often feels more like a personal exploration than a documentary that’s meant for wider audiences. The storytellers are rarely introduced by more than their first names—leaving audiences to try to put the pieces together for themselves (or be left in the dark completely)—and the storytelling sometimes feels a bit scattered.
In a large part, Stories We Tell is an examination of (and sometimes tribute to) Diane. Polley explores her late mother’s life, sometimes jumping back in time to go on long tangents about parts of the story that took place before her marriage to Michael. She sets up reenactments and takes great pains to talk about Diane’s personality, the decisions she made, and the star-studded memorial service that took place after her death in 1990. It’s a pretty in-depth examination—and, at times, you might even feel sorry for poor Diane, who isn’t around to speak for herself.
Really, though, (without giving away too much) the story is about Polley herself. And that makes for an awkward and sometimes self-conscious documentary—especially since Polley is reluctant to take part in her own story’s telling. She allows herself to appear as an off-camera voice or even on-camera as the film’s director, coaching her father on his presentation of his written version of the events. She narrates a few parts and reads a few key emails. But she generally leaves the storytelling to her siblings, resulting in a number of strangely second-hand, “well, from what you’ve told me…” accounts.
Because Sarah Polley is Sarah Polley—and because her family is known and respected in the business—this exploration of family secrets is an interesting one. It feels a bit like a less flashy, more introspective episode of E!’s True Hollywood Story, complete with its share of sex, lies, and scandal. And, for the most part, it comes together like a kind of real-life whodunit. Fortunately for Polley, she isn’t a Lohan or a Sheen or a Spears, so she has the luxury of telling her own story before it spirals out of control in the tabloids—but, really, if it weren’t for its somewhat famous players, the story wouldn’t be especially noteworthy.
Obviously, this story is an important one for Polley—and her decision to tell it (instead of leaving it to the media) was a bold one. But her attachment to the subject matter means that she includes much more information than necessary, making the film a rather tiring 108 minutes long. I’m sure that the process helped Polley come to grips with the story; it’s clearly her own kind of filmmaking therapy. But perhaps it would have been best if this extremely personal exploration had remained just that: personal.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
