The Stories We Tell

Oh Sarah Polley, I do love you!

Last night was a quiet night Chez WMM, and we thought we would rent a movie on Apple TV.

I had been reading a lot of great articles about Sarah Polley's new documentary, The Stories We Tell, which tells, from many different perspectives, the story of Sarah's mother, Dawn Polley, and the implication of her life and death on the family.  While the core of the movie focuses on a family secret, it becomes secondary to the exercise of how that secret is interpreted by all concerned, including the filmmaker herself.  The documentary title becomes a double entendre, since it is the family stories themselves that start Sarah on her quest.

I recommend not reading articles about this in advance if you want the full surprise.  However, if like me, you have read some of the articles, being "spoiled" does not reduce by one whit the impact of the story and the powerful and creative way Polley tells the story.

You get quite besotted with the characters, especially Sarah's siblings and her father, Michael Polley.  The latter's version forms the backbone of the story, with the other stories spinning off like so many spokes on a wheel.  Sarah is at once immersed within the story and separate from it as the filmmaker, which makes for an interesting juxtaposition.



Sarah Polley is a gifted actress, but she is even more gifted as a director, in my opinion.  And I hope that this is not the last documentary she undertakes in her career.

This was one of the most riveting 2 hours of film I have seen so far this year and if you can find it on itunes or on DVD, by all means, watch it: you will love it!  The film is getting a lot of accolades and I predict that Sarah will find herself at the Oscars next March, and hopefully, she takes her father with her.

The premise that our perspectives on our families and their stories depends on who we are and what part in the story we played is an interesting one.  I remember a few years ago that my sister wanted to put together a genealogical history of the family.  She started working on it, almost telling it like a story, but this upset my father no end, who wanted simply a "just the facts ma'am" approach and most decidedly did not want any editorializing along the way.  But all of our lives are editorialized along the way, aren't they?  I have a perspective on my childhood which is uniquely mine.  I often marvel when I hear my sister describe a certain event; it is often completely different than how I would have described it.

I also feel that we begin to understand our parents and our families better the older we get.  The all-to-human frailties of our parents become illuminated as we age and make our own mistakes as parents, as spouses, as friends or as employees/employers.  I often judged my mother and father harshly when I was younger.  Now, at 50, I am more forgiving and my only regret is that I did not know more about their interior lives.  I was fortunate in that after my mother died I got to spend a lot of time with my dad when he was still well and there were stories he shared and perspectives he shared about her and their marriage that I benefited greatly from.  He was less forthcoming about his own life, though much of that is a generational thing, I think.  However, after he died and I got to go through some of the things that he kept with him throughout his life, even in his final two years in the nursing home, including letters written to him by his father during World War II, I understood the depth of his feelings and how hard he must have worked to control those feelings.

Sarah's documentary is brave and entertaining.  Like all good art, it makes us think about our lives vis-a-vis the subject matter.  You can't ask for much more than that.

Stay Safe out there and have a wonderful Sunday!