I first heard about this film back in May of 2013, when Terry Gross interviewed the actor-director, Sarah Polley, on Fresh Air. Here's the 38-minute segment, if you're interested.
The trailer:
</center>The synopsis:
In this inspired, genre-twisting new film, Oscar®-nominated writer/director Sarah Polley discovers that the truth depends on who's telling it. Polley is both filmmaker and detective as she investigates the secrets kept by a family of storytellers.
She playfully interviews and interrogates a cast of characters of varying reliability, eliciting refreshingly candid, yet mostly contradictory, answers to the same questions. As each relates their version of the family mythology, present-day recollections shift into nostalgia-tinged glimpses of their mother, who departed too soon, leaving a trail of unanswered questions.
Polley unravels the paradoxes to reveal the essence of family: always complicated, warmly messy and fiercely loving. Stories We Tell explores the elusive nature of truth and memory, but at its core is a deeply personal film about how our narratives shape and define us as individuals and families, all interconnecting to paint a profound, funny and poignant picture of the larger human story.
- Written by The National Film Board of Canada
My thoughts about the film:
- At one point in the film, I was reminded about how when I came out, so many people shared with me very personal secrets of theirs that they had been keeping.
- I liked how we found out that one of the siblings in the family was gay.
- Near the end, I loved a series of shots of each of the main people who had been interviewed during the film. It was just a head shot, and no one spoke. Through facial expression alone, we watched each of them become emotionally overcome. I thought it was brilliant.
- I loved Michael Polley's outlook on love and life. I do wish he'd cut down on the smoking, however.
- I liked thinking about the question, "Who's story it is to tell?" when an event takes place between two people, but affects a lot of other people. The filmmaker and one of the people involved in the event disagreed on the answer to that very question:
- The filmmaker, who is the relative most affected by the event, feels strongly that the telling of the story should include: "My experience of it, your experience of it, as well as my family's experience of it. Everyone's point of view, no matter how contradictory, should be included and given equal weight."
- The person involved in the incident says, "I think they should all be heard, it's the giving them equal weight that I don't like. There are three players:
- The parties to the incident, those who were there and were directly affected by it
- Then there's a circle around that of people who were affected tangentially because of their relationship to the principal parties
- And then another concentric circle of people who have been told things by the principal parties."
Have you seen this movie? If so, what did you think?