We Got This Covered: Movies that are categorized as documentaries kind of run the gamut of being matter of fact, education films on one hand and biased agenda type films on the other. As a filmmaker, did you want to have your opinions or theories or thoughts readily apparent, or did you want to be as impartial and transparent as you could be?
Sarah Polley: I saw my role in the film as the investigator and to be kind of with the audience discovering this and trying to capture it and to construct it out of everybody else’s versions.
We Got This Covered: You had said you weren’t really sure what you were going to do with this movie or if it would just be for you and your family. At what point did you realize that people needed to see this?
Sarah Polley: I definitely never had that moment and I still haven’t (laughs). I still have enormous ambiguity about it being out in the world. It’s a very, very strange process. What was hardest about making the film is it felt a bit like I was grappling in the dark. I didn’t feel like I had a model for what I was trying to do, and I think that’s also the thing that kept me going because I felt like I might never have the experience again of making something where I’m really trying to figure out how to do this and I don’t have something to look to.
It’s not that I wasn’t inspired by other films. There are a lot of films that inspired me and I don’t think I invented anything here, but I did feel like it was more original than what I had done before and I think that kept me going even though I felt the risks of exposing myself and exposing my family, which were terrifying to me. I think the fact that they were so supportive kept me going as well.
We Got This Covered: If you had told this story about someone else or another family, do you think audiences will still identify this as a Sarah Polley movie?
Sarah Polley: I’m not sure. I think it’s really hard for you to see your own voice as a filmmaker unless you’ve really consciously decided to construct a voice for yourself. I’m not trying to know what my voice is. I’ve only made three films, but they do deal with a lot of similar subject matter like issues of memory and truth and use of long relationships and marriages, and certainly I seem to be mining the same territory without knowing it over and over again.
We Got This Covered: It was said that you had shot the movie for several months and then you would edit it for several months and then you would shoot some more footage after that. Have you ever been on a project as an actor or as a director where that happened, and how did that help you on this film?
Sarah Polley: I haven’t been on a project like that before, and it was hugely helpful here. I think there’s so much more space for rigorous thought and to really make intelligent decisions based on what is happening as opposed to what you decided was going to happen. It is definitely the way I would make a documentary in the future because especially when you’re dealing with real people’s lives, I think it’s really important to have that space and time to think about what you’re doing before you go back at it.
That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank Sarah for talking with us. Be sure to check out Stories We Tell, in theatres this Friday.
