Stories We Tell directed by Sarah Polley

Description

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Sarah Polley’s hybrid-documemoir ‘Stories We Tell’ purports to reconstruct the ephemeral and enigmatic Diane Polley. The ambitiousness of this project is exposed as the resurrection of a woman who is obscured by the veil of memory proves to be problematic. Polley’s avant-garde documentary-style depicts the act of reclamation as a collaborative exercise, but this directive method also exposes the contradictory nature of memory. Solidifying a romantic conception of the past, Harry Gulkin remembers Diane, at times, through a nostalgic and sentimental lens, his relationship with the past, an act of retrieval that exceeds temporal boundaries. In contrast, Michael Polley’s perspicacious insight gleaned through the lens of distance, frames his recollections as a confessional, an opportunity to admit wrongdoing and convey a didactic retrospection on the past. However, in the absence of Diane, it is this deceptivity of memory, infused with subjectivity, which fails to fully encapsulate her identity, causing Polley to recreate an idealised version of her mother’s character as the process forces an inward questioning of self.