STORIES WE TELL (2012)

“When you’re in the middle of a story, it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion, a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood, like a house in a whirlwind or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept away by rapids, and all aboard are powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it became anything like a story at all, when you’re telling it to yourself or to someone else.”      - Margaret Atwood

Produced by National Film Board of Canada and made by one of finest actress and wonderful director Sarah Polley, this personal documentary or what Polley called an interrogation process of her own life. Peeling off the myth and memory through reconstruction of past, it narrated the real and personal story of her life filming interviews of almost all of her family members, including her dad, siblings and number of other significant persons connected to her mom. Yes, she managed to maintain candid and honest confessions through interviewed figures revealing the most personal story of her life. Her mother who died too soon after her birth remained a centre of Polley’s existence in her absence. Her mom’s relationships with three different guys, she tries to explore the truth and ambiguity about her real biological father. While doing this, the film becomes quite repetitive, self indulgent one considering its length with running time of more than one and half hours. But at the same time it manages to bring all this personal self confessions in refined, genuine and interesting way to its audience. The film features an innovative sort of real find or recorded Super 8 like personal camera footage used as flashback, successfully captures the thoughtful and touching tale without much of emotional manipulation.  

What’s the most touching and genuine soul of the film is it features a beautiful relationship between daughter and the father, especially the one who’s not her biological father. Michael Polley’s confessional narration and expressions are something so pure reflection of soul to describe in words. This is enthralling, moving and genuinely layered experience and Sarah Polley is surely a Canadian filmmaker I’m looking forward too! Hope the audience don’t lose the wonderful actress behind the baggage of direction!