Stories We Determine
by ajacart
In her film Stories We Tell, Sarah Polley seems to mirror her own experiences of her ambiguous(biological) father figure with the strange form the movie assumes. She does so in accordance with a number of aphorisms delineated by Ludwig Wittgenstein, a prominent language philosopher, who states that “What constitutes a picture is that its elements are related to one another in a determinite way. […] A picture is a fact. […] the fact that the elements of a picture are related to one another in a determinate way represents that things are related to one another in the same way” (Wittgenstein 2.14-2.15).
By creating a plethora of footage that appears found, and intermixes with the found footage shown throughout the movie, Polley creates an ambiguity for the audience around who is actually her mother. The slight alteration in appearance between the actress who plays her mother and the old footage of her mother herself creates a dissonance for the viewer wherein we don’t know what is actual and what is fictionalised, or what is a re-enactment. This mimics the experience that Polley went through in her relationship to a father figure. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, she was surrounded by jokes about the notion that Michael may not be her father, only to realise in fact that they were founded and that Harry was her father. Similarly, the viewer struggles to delineate what her mother looks like. There are subtle suggestions in the disambiguity between what the two Dianes look like, only to be realised in the meta-cinematic revelation in the film, wherein the re-enactments are addressed, and then the credit list runs, and the viewer can tell who played Diane in the ‘old’ footage. This symmetrical function strengthens the form of the film and the force of the story. It also fits with Wittgenstein’s conception of what makes a picture, which can be superimposed to what makes a solid film.
I similarly felt the dissonance at not knowing what was meant to be footage and what was meant to reenactment. I found it distracting and it was a question that persistently nagged me throughout the film.
I felt that it was interesting to make the viewer question the mother’s identity, because it belies a certain betrayal and estrangement that Sarah Polley must have felt in regards to her mother. I feel like this interpretation compliments your reading that the discomfort of the viewer mimics Polley’s discomfort in not realizing who her father was. Not only did she not know her father, but in a way, she did not know who her mother was either. She had other lives previously unknown to Polley that constitute a different identity.
This also struck me as the most interesting facet of the documentary. There was a slow reveal of that home footage as artifice. It seemed candid and appropriate at the film’s beginning, but slowly eroded as it progressed. I was challenged by it: could they really have had all this terrific footage of all these important scenes? You point out a great parallel in the viewers dissonance in deciphering the real Diane from the actress, and Sarah’s confusion surrounding her biological father’s identity. It seems there’s another parallel that could be made: does either really matter? It is a question of authenticity and representation. Sarah was raised by her Mother’s husband who fulfilled the role of her father, just as the actress who played Diane in the home footage sufficiently represents Diane’s in these performed memories. All these are both performances that hide some element of the truth–of the actuality of the situation–they seem to me to be authentic substitutes.