A Night at the Movies

Here's a memory of a family gathering that may sound familiar to you: Years ago at a family reunion, my husband's aunts and uncles shared the story of their family coming to America from Russia. My husband's mother, Bobbi, was no longer alive to tell her story of the journey, so we relied on her sisters and her brother to share their accounts of their trip across the ocean by boat. One sister said that Bobbi danced and played the whole way to America and had a grand old time. Another said she was vomiting the entire way, her mother by her side, holding a damp wash cloth on her forehead. Each teller of the tale was confident that his or her story revealed the truth.

Sarah Polley's documentary, "Stories We Tell," illuminates the role of memory and how memory shifts over time and how we may discover truths through the telling of story. Polley interviews a circle of family and friends in order to learn more about her mother, Diane, who passed away when Polley was eleven years old. The "Storytellers" (the term Polley uses to refer to her father, sisters, brothers, and other friends and colleagues of her mother) reveal different vantage points. Early on in the film, one of the Storytellers describes the idea of being in the middle of a story vs. looking back and remembering what took place. He tells us that the story really takes shape after it has occurred. He says, "It becomes a story when we tell it to someone else."

On a cold November evening, our oral history group gathered to view Polley's film. We weren't exactly sure how or if the film would have a direct connection to our work, but we thought that the film might offer a lens into the oral history process, in particular how to communicate the essence of our project and how to develop plans for training future interviewers.

After viewing, we reflected on what we thought the film was really about.  On the surface it was a story about a young woman looking to learn more about her mother. We talked about a comment Polley makes in the film: "It's really about memory and the way we have stories about our lives...but the truth is ephemeral." We talked about the idea that people come to life through story. We agreed that whenever there are multiple storytellers, there are bound to be discrepancies in the stories. We talked about an essential question that simmers below the surface, throughout the film: "Can one get at the truth?"

We agreed that memory is unreliable, and yet in the stories, certain essential, if not literal, truths are discovered. It is through the stories that we come to understand the person telling the story and the individual's "truth" of his or her experience in the world. We noticed how the film highlights this idea. This observation led us back to our own interviewees, and we remembered how moments of discovery surfaced at certain points during our interviews. The discoveries were made in the midst of recalling experience through story. We remembered Gerry Albarelli's suggestion for guiding our interviewees to dig deeper. Gerry's words became like a mantra for us: "When you want the interviewee to elaborate, say, 'tell me a story about that.'"

For more info on Polley's film:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/movies/stories-we-tell-written-and-directed-by-sarah-polley.html?_r=0
               
               ~ E. Brooks