Sarah Polley’s film entitled “Stories We Tell” gives an incredibly creative look into autobiographical film making, with touches of the reflexive mode discussed by Bill Nichols. The film focuses around Sarah Polley’s memories of her deceased mother and her learning of her mother’s affair. “Stories We Tell” seems like a very run of the mill documentary at first, with head on interviews with family members interspersed with home movie footage, however what Polley ends up creating is much more emotionally investing and also treads the line between documentary film making and fiction film making. Polley is able to attain a specific reflexive feel for her documentary by engaging in, and recording conversations with her family members as well as recording her father’s voice for narration. Polley also uses Super 8 footage that is made to look like home movies in order to give them more of a hazy, memory-like feel.
Throughout the film, Polley is able to get more and more information and opinions about her situation with her mother’s affair through her family members such as her siblings. Since she is engaging in casual conversations with her family members, their memories play an important aspect on the story since Polley received several different versions from every family member. The reflexivity of Polley’s film allows for the audience to relate to the subject matter even though they are not directly related to the story. The fact that the audience learns about Polley’s life and her father’s life as they see her father narrate it all allows for them to feel for the two of them, since their onscreen relationship informs their real life relationship.
Polley is able to compound the reflexivity of the film through the use of Super 8 footage that acts as a stand in for home movie footage. The Super 8 footage is used to give the flashback and home movie scenes a fleeting feeling, as if the memories are truly being half remembered. It is easy to see these scenes as what they were intended to be, simple B-roll that is filling in the film, however they give the film a sense of emotional relatability, almost tricking the audience into feeling what Polley herself feels.
“Stories We Tell” accomplishes what many other autobiographical documentaries often fail at doing: grabbing the audience’s attention by making them feel like a part of the story. The use of casual conversation with family members and fictionalized home video footage creates an emotional tie between the audience and the story.