Stories We Tell (2012): The subjectivity of story telling

Written and directed by Sarah Polley, this documentary focuses on one family’s story and develops into a look at how we tell stories, and create them. 

The documentary gives a look at the film-making such as the recording of the narration with her father, which shows her asking to go over certain lines again in a different way.This shows the examination of the way in which filmmakers create stories, and how even line delivery can affect the way we perceive the story, everything no matter how small affects what we see on screen and what story we believe, even in documentaries. This is true to life as well as not only in films are stories told. We tell stories as human being to share experiences and emotions. However, each story has multiple perspectives. It also relies on memory which can be distorted by emotions, how we see the people involved and are own personal bias. 

Polley has chosen to involve all perspectives available to her, even though they may appear small in terms of the story, their perspective is given equal treatment. This at first appears to be a small story, but this technique allows for questions about the nature of story telling to develop. The story reveals that her father Michael is not her biological father, but that Harry, a man that her mother Diane had an affair with, is. No one knew for sure, but some people, like her siblings guessed that her mother had an affair. This is the story they are focused on, that as well as what Diane was like as a person. 

Harry confesses that his reaction to the idea of involving everyone's point of view was that he didn't like it. He thinks that all these people’s narratives are all affected ‘in terms of what the saw, in terms of what they felt, in terms of what they remembered and in terms of their loyalties. The same set of circumstances will affect different people in different ways. Not that there are different truths, there are different reactions to particular events. The crucial function of art is to tell the truth, to find the truth in the situation.' However, truth is so cold and concrete, which human beings are not. Human emotions are what drives stories, perspectives, art and films. Can we ever reach the truth without bias? Art can attempt to reach truth but it will always be affected by the people who are making it. For instance, Polley's editing of the interviews will then turn the perspectives into something ‘completely different’ as Michael puts it.

When one of her brothers asks her ‘What would you say this documentary is really about?’ She replies ‘Memory and the way we tell the stories of our lives. I think in many ways it is like trying to bring someone to life through people’s stories of them’ She also states that the way the stories differ shows how it is difficult to pin down the truth. It is truth that Michael and Harry seem so keen on being shown or told, but as we are shown, people’s perspectives of that and the past are so different and many of our stories have ‘fictions in them, mostly unintended’. There was even disagreement as to what kind of person their mother was. There is no one truth, everyone sees the world, reality and the past differently.

Harry sees this as his story only to tell, as he was one of the two people directly involved, from his point of view, only he and Diane can tell the story to get at the truth. However, the film shows that a story doesn't belong to any one person as there are so many involved even more than you would normally think. We are all affected by events in the past, even though it might not appear that we are that closely involved. This is illustrated when we see Polley asking her sisters about the revelation that Sarah’s biological father was in fact Harry. All three of her sisters got divorced that same year. Events have a much wider impact than you would guess. Also, when confronted with the truth, those involved show that their previous perceptions are suddenly distorted and so is their memory.

Another example of how people perceive stories differently is shown when Michael narrates the part about how a reporter was trying to get her to get the story published. Sarah cried and begged the reporter not to publish the story. The reporter saw it as a happy story and said she should not cry. We all see things differently. All of the view points differ, memories are distorted as memory is subjective, so is the past, so are the stories we hear. Additionally, the film makes us question how we tell our stories or rather how you in particular tell your own. 

Michael says that he wished Diane would have told her of her worry that he was not the birth father of Sarah. He said he would hope and thinks he would have told her he accepted that ambiguity and would consider the child as his, but that is not how she perceived it. So he says ‘why is it that we talk and talk without somehow conveying what we are really like?' This was a very powerful statement to me as I often worry about the way in which I have said things, and how I come across to others. People all see us in different ways and that may sometimes not echo who we are or how we will really react when it comes to something big like what Diane was going through. 

Sarah asks Harry about his desire to publish the piece he wrote about his version of what he went through. He says, ‘Well I think anyone who writes anything... wants to bring it out to a public. I mean if there’s a story to be told and if the story has some validity and some resonance then you don’t keep it to yourself’. It is human to want to share your story with others, we all want to share what our own experiences through storytelling. His desire to tell his story, and her own desire to document the experience through film, moulded together for Sarah but she was uncomfortable of telling it unless it included everyone’s perspective. This included her families, his and her own, no matter how contradictory the perspectives were. She didn't know what the project would be, something for herself or something she would share. ‘I wouldn't even pretend to know how to tell it’ without beginning to explore it with others through interviews', which suggests that our own point of view is formed through telling a story with someone and sharing opinions on it, reflecting and discussing it. 

Sarah’s own desires of wanting to make a documentary are questioned by Michael, is it a way of her hiding from her own feelings about her mother and a wish to reconstruct her? Her own view of the past shielded by all those she is interviewing? She admits that this is partly the case, and then this knocks onto the way then this film has been pieced together by her with this biased view and the way this story affects her sense of self, her mother, her family and her past. What is also striking is the way this one woman, Diane, has struck the lives of so many, even the memories of her still hold wonder, sadness, pain, laughter and love. She is kept alive through the eyes of those in this documentary.

Michael's narration weaves the film together, and we learn that he has been reading a previous letter he sent to Sarah. His wonderfully expressive prose underlines the themes of the film so well that it makes the film incredibly powerful and affective. ‘I think I wrote this story because it really says so many interesting things about the human condition’. This sentiment really echoes the power of this film, which is one that makes you examine people's stories of an event important to you, how you are perceived and your own way of telling stories. This as well as seeing stories as something that connects us as human beings and accepting that the past is subjective and the truth, hard to reach.