"Stories We Tell" (2013)

There are directors twice Sarah Polley's age who don't come anywhere close to how perceptive and sensitive her films are. Her debut Away From Her, a beautiful story dealing will Alzheimer's, displays the skill of someone far beyond their years. While her second film Take This Waltz felt a little too trifling for its own good, it was a warm and compassionate film dealing with relationships and the complicated history of those relationships. Polley's latest film Stories We Tell is possibly her most accomplished film to date.

Polley delves into her family's history after discovering the father who raised her is not her birth parent. She interviews many members of her family and friends of her mother to try to understand what happened. Polley's mother, a vivacious woman stifled by her second marriage, is alleged to have had an affair which led to the conception of Sarah. However, since her mother passed away, it is difficult to really know what exactly happened.

While telling the story, and Polley sees it foremost as a story, Polley begins to investigate the limitations of film as medium to grasp the truth. Her main interest is in acknowledging the distortive power of documentary film. As a recognition of this, Polley purposely chooses not to remove herself as the documentarian, leaving in talking heads and pointing to her role as the arbitrator of what got left on the cutting room floor.

Though Polley wants to give equal weight to all voices affected by the events surrounding the infidelity, she also notes the impossibility for a complete picture of what took place to be revealed. Memory, opinions and gaps in information will cause an inability to fully realize what really took place.

Polley makes too fine of a point on her themes and her intents towards the films end, but this lack of subtly serves a purpose. Polley, like the film's title implies, believes that in telling stories we will into existence "truth", crafting the perceived reality of events. In this regard, Polley is the ultimate storyteller and determined the "truth" we see in the film.

Speaking of the film in these terms makes it all sound like a playful exercise in structure, but Polley is also an affectionate filmmaker. She likes listening to her subjects. She enjoys hearing a good story told and she enlists many people to lovingly recount their version of what took place. She's sympathetic to all of them, and she grasps as hard as she can to figure out the mysterious woman who was her mother. In the end, Polley uses her filmmaking as an act of coping, of working through her feelings about her discoveries.

Grade: ★★★★