In Engaging Cinema, Bill Nichols uses the chapter, “Documentary Film,” to focus on identifiable elements of the genre. Nichols explains how the purpose of a documentary directly informs its technical and stylistic choices. He begins by highlighting some of the differences documentary films possess from that of narrative cinema, particularly in their respective goals. Nichols notes that documentaries, “typically seek to engage the viewer in relation to some aspect of the world in which we live,” as opposed to “an imaginary or fictional world” (Nichols 99). Of course, this also stresses the significance of point of view and just whose world we are introduced to. Nichols expands upon documentary’s tendencies to also include those which “make frequent use of poetic and narrative storytelling techniques as well as rhetorical ones” (Nichols 99). We see these modes employed by Sarah Polley in her personal narrative and poetic rendering of her documentary Stories We Tell (2012). I’m particularly interested in how Polley uses these modes to evoke an emotional response within her viewers as a form of persuasiveness. In my own viewing, I was greatly moved by the exposure of process and the collage-like building of memory or imaginings of the past.
One element that seems important to Nichols, is the relationship between perspective and persuasion associated with the genre of documentary. Nichols clarifies that “persuasiveness is not necessarily identical to persuasion: a documentary may move viewers or arouse feelings more than persuade them of the soundness of a specific argument” (Nichols 100). This is something we are made well aware of as elements of production and the inner workings of filmmaking (actors, crew, equipment, and process) are made visible throughout Stories We Tell. This impulse can appeal to the viewer’s emotions as we are exposed to, immersed in, or connect with the viewpoint of the world the documentary is guiding us through. Nichols cites two goals of documentary film when he writes, “engaging the viewer in a distinct perspective emotionally or persuading the viewer of a particular perspective intellectually go hand in hand in documentary, even though different films vary the balance between these two goals” (Nichols 100). In this way, Nichols also argues that these goals are privileged over “the narrative emphasis on telling an engaging story or the avant-garde stress on the form of the work itself” (Nichols 100).
Emotions are not the only mode a film can appeal to in efforts to incite change or effect. Nichols draws attention to documentary’s relationship to “reason or logic” as tools utilized by filmmakers (Nichols 100). However, logic alone may not move a viewer towards a drastic shift in opinion or perspective. Nichols explains its rather nuanced use: “for rhetorical purposes the appearance of logic may do the job as well as actual logic” (Nichols 101). This, I find particularly interesting in its connection to film as a medium, one that employs appearances by its innate connection to visuality. Nichols spends quite a bit of the chapter discussing how rhetoric influences documentary film’s purpose of persuasion and also identifies it as a means of dislodging documentary from a finite understanding of “truth.” He explains, “the anecdotes, impressions, or proofs may, in fact, be true, but most important for rhetorical discourse is that they convey the impression of truthfulness” (Nichols 102). This makes me wonder, how significant is an individual’s own criticality in watching documentary different from watching classic narrative cinema? Or is it different at all?
When discussing images used in Pare Lorentz’s 1936 film, The Plow That Broke the Plains, Nichols explains, “the images have a powerful impact” and that they “fulfill [their] persuasive purpose” whether they are “truly from the American Midwest in the early 1930’s” or not (Nichols 103). But is the viewer aware of this possible discrepancy while viewing the film–both the 1936 audience or the audience of today? Later, Nichols continues, “the purpose of the film is not to provide documents and evidence as such but to shape a documentary experience that uses such material to make a moving, affecting case from a particular perspective” (Nichols 103). Are there some documentaries where the “impression of truthfulness” feels more fitting or comfortable than others in that we accept a degree of manipulation for the greater effect of emotional and intellectual persuasion necessary? How might we catalog “truth” or “truthfulness” in Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell in comparison to Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson (2016)?
Perhaps it is significant to look at the ways Nichols identifies “the six modes of documentary film” in order to ground a conversation around how each of these documentaries appeals to emotional and intellectual persuasiveness. The six modes Nichols spots are expository, poetic, observational, participatory, reflective, and performative. Nichols notes that multiple modes may be functioning within one documentary at a time, and it is less of an either/or than a means to locate “a set of conventions for representing reality” (Nichols 114). The fact that there are many modes only further confirms the subjectivity of perspective in regards to a depiction of reality or experience: “Although there may be only one historical world, and even if certain facts about it can be agreed upon as objectively true, the ways of seeing and representing that world, like the ways of interpreting it, vary considerably” (Nichols 114).
In relation to this week’s viewings, I’m particularly curious how the intersection of these modes helps to serve the emotional effect created in Sarah Polley’s film. Nichols considers different techniques used by documentary filmmakers to elicit various reactions from an audience such as voice-over and interviews, both of which we encounter in Stories We Tell. Early on in the film, we are made aware of the documentary itself with the inclusion of the boom, the lights, the process of setting up for interviews, and Sarah Polley’s voice and face as both filmmaker and subject. This choice seems to be in conversation with a few different modes. It is poetic, in its stressing of “form or pattern over an explicit argument, even though it may well have an implicit perspective on some aspect of the historical world” (Nichols 116). But it is also greatly participatory in that “the filmmaker interacts with subjects–probing, questioning, challenging, perhaps even provoking” (Nichols 119).
Because this documentary’s intentions appear to lie in its emotional connections, one way of eliciting such emotion from the viewer is by exposing the elements of process. The searching for “truth” (a word mentioned in the film—particularly of significance to Harry Gulkin in relation to art’s purpose and possibly his own) is being documented by the very act of making this film. Or as Nichols writes, “the film becomes a record of the interactions of subjects and filmmaker” (Nichols 116). Of course, this is also an aesthetic decision made as well. A sense of humor arises within this film from its level of awareness and self-referentiality. This seems to bring a closeness between the medium and the viewer, the participants and the viewer, and ultimately a degree of kinship felt with the filmmaker. This sense of connectivity and tenderness appears to be Polley’s goal (or one of her goals) in creating this film–allowing the viewer to feel with her alongside her discoveries of self and within the filmmaking process.
In her article “The Vulnerable Spectator: Vagaries of Memory, Verities of Form,” Amelie Hastie speaks to this transformation of expectations. She writes, “if we ‘‘cooperate’’ with this film, we enter into the possibility of seeing it first as one thing, then as another. And in that active transformation— first the film’s and then our own—we witness the complexity of memory, narrative, and belief layering and unraveling before us” (Hastie 59). Later she continues to examine Polley’s specific choices as a filmmaker that “reveal[s] the past not as ‘‘truth,’’ as some might prefer it, but as imagination and re-creation” (Hastie 60). If Polley, as her voice-over explains, really is uncertain about the ultimate outcome of this film or in some ways its purpose, a part of her must understand the significance of including herself as one of the “storytellers” in the film. Her uncertainty calls upon our empathy, evokes a human connection we might locate within ourselves. The interview style relies on the interpersonal relationships of family. This allows for moments of humor and moments of deep sadness. The drive to reconstruct a past, a person, an unanswerable or perhaps unknown question, sets the documentary out on a poetically ambivalent quest, one that allows for many diversions, anecdotes, reenactments (that surprised me–might this be the use of a reflexive mode?), and moving interviews. Hastie describes this outcome beautifully when she writes, “the very chronology of the film, in its interweaving between past and present, both real and imagined, suggests that this compassion was always possible; our working through of these past experiences lays it bare” (Hastie 61). This makes me wonder, in what ways do Sarah Polley’s choices as a documentary filmmaker draw attention to the process of thinking, creating, and editing this documentary shift the focus and conversation from her specific family story to that of a larger question around the act of storytelling?
Hastie, Amelie. “The Vulnerable Spectator: Vagaries of Memory, Verities of Form.” Film Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 2, 2013, pp. 59–61. University of California Press, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/fq.2014.67.2.59.
Nichols, Bill. Engaging Cinema: An Introduction to Film Studies. W.W. Norton & Co., 2010.
Stories We Tell. Dir. Sarah Polley. Mongrel Media, 2012. OSU Secured Media Library. Web. 1 November 2020.