我们讲述的故事

“世界上真正的原创，只有自己的人生”，在看这部特别的纪录片时，我不断想起庵野秀明的这句话。继《我的温尼伯》后，《我们讲述的故事》再一次刷新了我对纪录片的认识。前者虽然以个人的意识流作为叙述线索，但起码是关于一座城市的记忆，后者则把纪录片变成了更加私密的媒介。这部电影所讲述的，完全是导演Sarah Polley个人的家庭记录，是她对逝去母亲的爱情故事的重塑，更是她自己的“寻父”故事。

对于这样一个极其个人极其私密的故事，她的姐姐一开始就先自嘲了一番“谁会想看我们家那些乱七八糟的事情啊？”但随着访谈的进行，回忆的打开，那些逝去的人与永不逝去的爱交织在一起，转变为能让所有人共情的动人力量。如果说自己的人生才是最好的原创，那每一个家庭都可以是一部电影，一部小说，甚至是一部史诗。

这部纪录片更特别的地方，在于片中大部分看起来就像是过去真实记录的片段，其实都是由演员扮演的。剧组特意找了相似的房子、家具和演员，以求最大程度还原当时的吉光片羽。其程度之逼真，让人几乎无法分辨哪些是真正的家庭影像，哪些是后期的摄制。

所以这可以说是挑战纪录片形制的一部纪录片。当一部电影使用了大部分后期重现，这还能算是一部纪录片吗？更有趣的是，映后谈时本片制片人说到，当她把成片展示给最重要的一位当事人时，他的回应是：“你知道，事实不是这个样子的，但这的确是一部很棒的电影。”

我认为这部纪录片最有意思的地方正在于此，在片中最具冲击性的真相浮出水面之后，Sarah Polley继续花了大量的篇幅去讲述她拍摄这部电影的前因后果，以及她对这部纪录片所处立场的思考。何为真实？在Sarah看来，只有包括了事件所有相关人士的讲述，才有可能展现一个事件的全貌，即使是对于“我的父亲是谁？”这样一个如此私密的事件，也是如此。但“罗生门”由此而来，真实在每个人的叙述中各自偏离。

然而，有一样东西的存在，让整个故事保持了某种让人信服且感动人心的一致性，那就是他们对事件中唯一永远沉默的讲述者，已经逝去的Sarah母亲的爱。电影接近尾声的时候，有一个片段，是片中的所有受访者谈到那位永远明朗大笑充满活力的女性时，眼含泪花、沉默不语的模样。于是明白了，每个人所看到的真实可能有所差别，但爱让他们连接在了一起，对于一个故事的讲述来说，这样就已经足够了。

“Love’s short, forgetting’s long,” says Neruda. As a documentary that structures from the “stories” (plural as in different perspectives and reactions towards what happened, not necessarily what actually happened), in terms of “stories we tell”, to “telling”, that incorporates all that contradictory yet common feelings and words that have to be expressed towards the absent Daine, the climax of Sarah’s biological father, and the meaning of their own lives from the story. I notice how the fact of the unreliability of our memory plays an essential role in interviews among basically all these people attached to the story, even Sarah, the director behind the scenes. The interview question on the day of Daine’s funeral comes in early in the film, and the siblings talk about how being in the entertainment industry makes her funeral seem like a surreal production, which is ironic. After going through all the suspense and reveal of discovering the true biological father of Sarah, almost composing the “truth”, the film pauses and Sarah questions the deeper purpose of her exposing this story and the motive behind finding the truth. Is there an actual truth? Does it matter? As an audience, I stop as well. Till the end, Sarah finally asks that question, what everyone feels, instead of on the day of Daine’s funeral, but on the day she dies and they all get a chance to talk last words to her. That’s the part when they all start sobbing and getting stuck in a sentimental emotion of recalling. The word “why” does not exist in that fly’s life, sitting on Micheal’s window to accompany him. But this does not make any less of the meaningness of that fly’s life.

In 2023, in recounting the story in a podcast Sarah said her version was absent in the film, and she only wrote it out after her father has passed away in 2018, so he would not have to bear the hard feelings of the self exposure of his daughter.

Amidst watching the film where her mom’s passing at the early age of 54 was shown, it struck to me that if you stay less self aware and roll along with your instincts and longings, then in a sense you are propelled by the unfinished issues from earlier experience of your life. You might feel you are free, at least you made your choices, but in a way you are destined — of course we can say that applies to all of us in the sense of mysticism and determism — but this is a bit different as if you were willing to take a longer view into your past and relinquish your impulse to be elsewhere for a while, then you might be able to arrive at a truly free place, a place of some people call existential angst, while more agreeable people will say now you can rely on your body feelings and intuition: allow curiosity and joy be your guide, you are for sure suiting for a better state of mind.

Her dad didn’t look like it, i mean his face seems to be a mismatch to his words and narrative.

Recently reading biographies of people and seeing interviews of liked people, there seems to be a definitive distinction between two state of being, one that acted with impulse, and one that acted upon reflection — a lot times a major grapple in a critical stage of life, almost forced by dissatisfaction of miseries and misfortunes took place before, and after a long struggle filled bumps and lumps, suffering and hearbreaks, you live on the solace of a meta viewpoint of a journey map, implying a hope that this sadness has inevitably an end of some kind. Gradually you slide, perhaps it’s just you are tired, to a numbing and/but settling slope that land you to a sail on another aether of your life.