Stories We Tell

I had to look up Sarah Polley. Oh yeah, the one from the Dawn of the Dead remake. Wait, she directed Take this Waltz? Hey, hey!  Step right up, Sarah. Can’t say I can pick you out of a line-up. Can’t even say Take this Waltz was genius – but parts of it were, and in the long run I judge film by peaks rather than feel. And Take this Waltz had some awesome peaks.

Stories We Tell is a Sarah’s self-explorative documentary. When most of us think of “self-explorative,” we imagine a person coming to terms with thoughts and feelings. In this case, the feeling is multi-layered – the documentary explores the truth of rumors about Sarah’s parentage and then let’s us in on how Sarah feels about discovering truth or falsehoods within the rumors. This is a pretty indulgent piece of work. I imagine it’s like a married person creating a documentary of all the people he or she dated before the knot was tied. And it feels indulgent. I suppose all movies are indulgent in a sense – come explore my thoughts and feelings on film! Stories We Tell, however, makes no bones about exclusion; this is Sarah’s documentary about Sarah searching for Sarah’s genetic father. Hop on or jump off, but what you take from it relates only per how much you identify with Sarah Polley’s personal world.

The humor is subtle, as in most documentaries. Sarah is the youngest of her clan and she interviews each of her sibs. They all know stuff. Their communal mother, an actress, died of cancer in her 40s when Sarah was just a child. Before that time, mom lived. A lot. First marriage marred by disaster. Second marriage marred by stoicism. To find satisfaction in her second run, she escapes from Toronto to Montreal to join in a thespian company. During the Montreal escapade, mom gets pregnant with Sarah. Was it a member of the troupe, or second husband who came to visit or somebody else? I felt the story extremely anticlimactic after we have the definitive answer. Also felt it was odd of Sarah to use actors in the roles of certain players in this production. Are the real figures deceased, like mom? Don’t know. I was willing to give Stories a mild thumbs-down upon learning this fact, however, this film has the punchline of the year. If you can sit through seventeen false endings to get to the last line of Stories We Tell, believe me, it’s worth it.

Stories We Tell is a movie for all you psych majors out there – come explore the world inside your head through the external factors and influences that apply ONLY TO YOU. Depending on your perspective, Stories We Tell feels either like being let in on a therapy session or a pictorial guide through Sarah Polley’s diary. Polley wanna therapist! No. Polley wanna audience.

Who is dad?
Who can it be?
The guy who helped make
This documentary

Who is dad?
The answer is folly
Whomever he is
His name ends at Polley

Rated PG-13, 108 Minutes
D: Sarah Polley
W: Sarah Polley
Genre: Self discovery
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: People fascinated by … themselves
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Sarah who?