Stories We Tell (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Stories We Tell (2012) – S. Polley

I went into this without knowing quite what it was…which may be best (so perhaps skip this review and head straight to the film, which comes very highly recommended).  I thought this was a fictional drama, likely to be heavy-going, but it’s not; instead it exists in the grey area between fiction and documentary (where Werner Herzog and Orson Welles sometimes trod).  Sarah Polley (Canadian star of The Sweet Hereafter, 1997, and Go, 1999, and director of Away from Her, 2006) begins by providing some biographical details about her mother, but it soon becomes apparent that a biosketch is not the real aim here, when we are introduced to Sarah’s father, brothers and sisters, and family friends who are all asked to recount stories – or actually one story that is slowly revealed – about Sarah’s mother (in front of Sarah herself, the offscreen interviewer).  With Rashomon a distant forebear, we come to see how each narrator may have let their version of the mother’s life be coloured by their own values and vested interests.  Polley herself is even challenged about whether she is revealing the truth or refashioning the hours of recorded footage in the editing room to reflect her own needs or beliefs.  Moreover, some of the Super-8 footage from the 1970s turns out to have been created later with actors and shot to look dated by Polley and her team. If this sounds like a bit of a mess, it’s not – it turns out to be a moving drama (yes) about human relationships, the choices we make in life and their consequences, and above all, the ways in which we then digest and report those events to others.  In the end, this is compelling reflexive cinema that comments on its own genesis and biases even while managing to tell us a real-life mystery story with a number of surprises.  Highly recommended.

The Blue Kite (1993)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Blue Kite (1993) – Z. Tian

A quiet film that contemplates how history impacts personal lives, charting a mother and son as they experience China under Mao between 1950 and 1968.  The film is broken into three parts (Dad, Uncle, and Stepfather), representing the three husbands of the central character, Shujuan (played by Liping Lü), and the three great upheavals in Mao’s era, Rectification & the Hundred Flowers Movement, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.  Director Zhuangzhuang Tian had to smuggle this film out of China in order to complete the editing and postproduction in Japan and the movie was subsequently banned in China.  Indeed, it takes a very critical stance toward the events of this period, which see the optimistic Shujuan and her husband embracing the new Communist Party of China only to discover later that whispers about “counter-revolutionaries” could be used to send people to forced labour camps.  The Hundred Flowers Movement may have encouraged critiques of the government but these were later used against those brave enough to speak out.  The family is subsequently impacted by Mao’s decision to move the entire country to new collective agricultural techniques during the Great Leap Forward which lead to widespread and devastating famine.  Many died of malnutrition.  Finally, when Shujuan makes the decision to marry a Party elder in order to provide a better life for her rascally son, Tietou (or “Iron Head”), the Cultural Revolution emboldens the young students who make up the Red Guards to attack those seen to be bourgeois or elite.  So, in some ways, the film is a tragedy, but it also speaks to the power of family and community bonds, as the mother and son, and their friends and relatives who share a courtyard in Beijing, weather the chaos of these events (which are not didactically explained – I used Wikipedia later to better understand them).  As dramatic as these upheavals seem, it is hard not to wonder about the coming decades or century, when even more intense dramas may be in store for our children (as a result of global warming, over-population, and their consequences).  Indeed, there are places in the world where upheavals affect personal lives now (Syria or Burma, for example; it is easy to generate a depressing list).  The Blue Kite reminds us not to ignore those who suffer from political decisions (as there but for good luck and good fortune go we).

  

A Taste of Honey (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

A Taste of Honey (1961) – T. Richardson

A key film in the “kitchen sink” neo-realist movement in Britain in the early 1960s which took a hard look at living conditions for the poor and working class and the various social problems that affected them.  Director Tony Richardson worked with playwright Shelagh Delaney to adapt her recent 1958 play for the screen.  Rita Tushingham makes her debut appearance as Jo, a high school girl with an irresponsible single mother who has to make it on her own when her mother abandons her for a new husband.  She falls in with a sailor (who happens to be Black from Birmingham) and eventually finds she is pregnant after he has shipped off.  She finds steady support from Geoff (Murray Melvin) a young gay man who is also one of society’s outcasts.  Richardson and DP Walter Lassally shoot the film in that fresh new wave style similar to what was happening in France at the time (but with echoes of the Italian Neo-realist period too).  Tushingham does a fine job portraying a young girl managing a difficult time with aplomb and Dora Bryan is excellent as her negligent swinging mother.  For its time, this film tackled some key taboos with equanimity.  A good effort and right up there with the other films in this movement (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1960; The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 1962; This Sporting Life, 1963; Billy Liar, 1963; and Kes, 1969; are the ones I’ve seen – all recommended).