11- Portraits of the Self

The Many Truths of Dianne's Legacy

Giancarlo Gualtieri

Mathieu Morin

Sophia Frangakis

  

     Truth has always been a vital part of human curiosity. Humans make up stories and characters, like Cronus, to help them explain truths and to avoid deception. But just how accurate is the author in telling the story? Are readers forced to believe them? Do they take what they see for granted? Or do the words “seeing is believing” best describe people as far as trust is concerned? Stories We Tell and The Silverlake Life: The View From Here both put honesty and truth into perspective. Despite many other similar themes such as family togetherness, they also provoke thoughts of skepticism. How genuine were the stories being told? Were they live footages or interpretative recreations? It gets progressively harder to tell seeing as truth is not always universal.

     Directed in 2012 by Canadian actress Sarah Polley, Stories We Tell is a family-centered documentary that attempts to re-narrate the story of the late Dianne Polley in 108 minutes. However, numerous issues are presented along the way. Sarah, albeit unintentionally, receives many different sides from the many different people she interviews. To her surprise, she even uncovers an affair that her mom had in Montreal. Lo and behold, Sarah learns that she is the very product of that encounter. Anxious to spread the news to others, she creates a script, which includes every family member including both her legal and biological fathers.

     This week, we looked at the reconstruction of stories. Directors of documentaries often use interviews to tell a story, but this film goes beyond that. Sarah uses a series of voice-over narrations to keep the film going. Not only that, but the narrator is non other than her dad Michael, a man who plays an important role in the story of Dianne Polley. Sarah even decides to keep mistakes of the voice-over in the film. She also uses information to recreate footage and spread them throughout the film as little cut scenes. Lastly, she puts a special emphasis on silences. She uses these to express characters’ emotions and to close out certain scenes. These artistic choices can be seen when Sarah constantly tells her father to re-say a particular line or when the audience notices a filming crew in her house that film actors playing the role as Sarah’s family. This is actually very interesting because she is keeping some parts of the film very honest while also deceiving the viewers in others. Sarah’s choice to include the exposure of the film crew helps the viewer to understand that truth can be very subjective and malleable if it’s based off of memory alone. This is why stories need witnesses to preserve details and critical information.

     The main issues raised in Stories We Tell are Polley’s discovery of a biological father and Michael Polley’s need to embrace the entire story as his, and only his, own. The first issue is presented as subtle comments made by her family. They tell her that she “looks like the mailman”, not her Michael. The situation hits a climax when she begins to do her research and goes to Montreal to meet her suspected biological father, Albert. This is presented as both a figurative and metaphorical leap from her old ignorant life to her knew enlightened one. Michael Polley’s sense of narrative entitlement is presented as just that: him narrating the story throughout the movie. This artistic choice was probably made to help convince Michael to let her release the story to the world as an independent film.

     Sarah Polley actually appeared in a blog and explained how she came up with the idea of documenting the story. It can be found here:

http://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2012/08/29/stories-we-tell-a-post-by-sarah-polley/.

Mark and Tom's Fight Against AIDS

     The Silverlake Life: The View from Here is a 100-minute movie directed by Peter Friedman and Tom Joslin. It documents the life of a Californian gay couple diagnosed with HIV: Mark Massi and Tom Joslin. The movie opens with an interview of Mark recalling his love of Tom. It then backtracks to the moment when they were both diagnosed with AIDS. The movie documents their lives as a gay couple with AIDS and how all of that affects their relationship, family and everyone else they interact with.

     The documentary is set in 1993, a period that shunned homosexuality and bearers of AIDS. It was a fairly discriminating time that did not accept differences as easily as today’s society. Many interviews with judgmental family members and peers showed that they did not support their “decision” to be a gay couple. During the holiday season that followed the diagnosis, Mark and Tom had decided to go visit Tom’s family. Tom carried out many interviews with his mother and father. While they were beginning to accept the fact that their son was homosexual, they did not show any signs of surprised when they were presented with the bad news. Both parents did not appreciate Mark for very shallow reasons such as appearance. Following the Christmas sequence, Tom’s situation became progressively worse. At first, he had to stay in bed most of the day but he was perfectly capable of doing daily tasks such as walking, eating and going to the bathroom. However, as time went on, Tom became very sick. He was unable to perform basic tasks on his own, lost a lot of weight and started to count the days he had left to live. Within a few weeks, Tom had passed away. Mark was very depressed and getting more sick as well. Most people realized how much both men had loved each other and each family member felt compassion for Mark, especially Tom’s mother. She had seen the extent that Mark was willing to do in order to keep Tom happy and safe.

     One of the most important scenes in the movie is Peter’s interview with Tom and Mark. He was asking them how the illness affected their lives. Peter found that even though they were both fighting AIDS, they had very different views on their lives. Mark was generally very positive despite harsh criticism and saw the silver lining in every situation. However, Tom was very pessimistic and unhappy. They viewed their final days as a blessing and a curse, respectively. It’s interesting to observe how the exact same disease can affect multiple people very differently. In an interview with popmatters, Friedman discusses the long-term battle against AIDS and how The Silverlake Life: The View From Here is about what happens when one’s body falls apart from it. It can be found here:

http://www.popmatters.com/feature/friedman-peter-030911/  

     The movie was much like the documentary Stories We Tell. It showed many interviews with family member and peers. It also showed archival footage of the gay couple’s daily life. The most prominent scenes of this documentary were the silences. The emotions were so strong that people weren’t capable of talking in front of the camera anymore. This movie has different genres, from journals and memories to romance and drama. An important concept of this documentary is truth and stereotypes. It took the death of Tom for Mark’s peers and family to acknowledge the veracity of the relationship and the connection between the two men. Neither of them were bad or inadequate. They only appeared to be because society had put them in that light for being different.

Our Thoughts

     The films Stories We Tell and The Silverlake Life: The View From Here are both documenting about the loss of a loved one. These two stories are undoubtedly relatable because, as humans, the viewers have faced or will eventually face losing a loved one. As shown in both films, it is something that is mournful but unfortunately inevitable.

     There are many things that can be learned from both of the films. Two of them being truth-telling and trust. Trust is not something that comes easy, but a lack of it would mean that these two films would not have happened. In Stories We Tell, Sarah Polley did not know what answers she was going to receive from interviewing her family members. However, after putting her trust into their answers and believing what they said, she found out that Michael was not her biological father. If she did not believe they were telling the truth, she would have never found her real father. In The Silverlake life: The View From Here there were two narrators; Tom and Mark. Both of them had AIDS and were told that they would eventually pass away. However, Tom ended up getting more ill than Mark and did not have much time left to live. Therefore, Tom had to put his trust into Mark to continue the documentary after he passed away. Mark did in fact finish the film. In that sense, their trust in each other was very strong. From both films, the importance of trust and how strong relationships can be is very clearly highlighted. Perhaps the inevitability of death forces people to trust each other. Provided below is a link that shows the mortality rate of those who had AIDS in 2015.

http://www.who.int/gho/hiv/en/

     We can see through these films how much an illness can affect someone's life. In both films the main characters were diagnosed with deadly illnesses, which of course, lead to their slow death. The films both show how much one person can have an impact on our lives and how much our lives change when they pass away. Like many say "you don't know what you've got until it's gone", which in this case cannot be more accurate.

     I have been through a loss of a loved one and I know it is not easy. Thankfully, my grandmother did not die from an illness but her death still had a huge impact on my life and many others'. However, just like in Stories We Tell, reminiscing about stories my family and I had with our beloved made us happy and remember how great of a person she was. Also, just like in The Silverlake Life: The View From Here, dealing with the death of a loved one right as it happens is very difficult and there are many stages of recovery that everyone goes through. Basically, as stated previously, everyone will eventually go through the difficulties of losing a loved one and the recovery phase that goes along with it.

     The filmmakers had two different styles of documentaries that were both interesting. In Stories We Tell, Sarah, the filmmaker, interviewed many people that knew her mother, Dianne. While the interviewees were speaking, Sarah included clips of the story being told to help the viewers visualize it more clearly. However, one thing that I believe did not work so well is when she told her interviewees what they were going to be interviewed about. I believe it would of been even more raw and interesting if they did not know before the interviews began. Differently in The Silverlake Life: The View From Here, the two filmmakers were documenting their everyday life after being diagnosed with AIDS. What I enjoyed the most about their style of filming is that you did not miss out on anything because they both brought a camera wherever they went, which also proved to us that nothing they said was false. One thing that did not work well in this film is the use of footage that was not needed. For example, in one scene the filmmakers would be conversing, but it was nothing interesting and so it became boring to watch. It’s understandable that they would want to include as much as possible, but knowing when there is too much fluff is also a good skill to have.


     Overall, it’s important to realize that documentaries can be very deceptive. However, there’s a fine line between deception and perspective. Some details get lost along the way, but that doesn’t mean that the director is trying to lie. Stories We Tell shows audiences what a professional, recreated story could look like while The Silverlake Life: The View From Here is more transparent and emotional. Stories are just another tool of communication. The truths involved could have many possible perspectives to them, but is there really only one side that holds all the right answers?