95% Stories We Tell

All Critics (61) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (58) | Rotten (3)

Never sentimental, never cold and never completely sure of anything, Polley comes across as a woman caught in wonder.

After you see it, you'll be practically exploding with questions - and with awe.

Stories We Tell is just the latest reminder of nonfiction film's current, endlessly innovative state. That's a story worth savoring.

It's a relationship drama spanning three decades, a detective mystery, an essay on the nature of memory, and a critique of our need to process messy human life into streamlined narrative arcs even at the cost of oversimplifying.

Sarah might have wrapped up this documentary after her parentage is revealed about 70 minutes in, yet it continues for another 50 as she ruminates over the tale,... her engrossing personal story gradually devolving into an exercise in self-regard.

Stories told again and again have a way of neatening things up. Stories have a way of ironing out the wrinkles. Polley lets the wrinkles remain.

Stories We Tell shows us that the truth and the way its told are two very different things. Polley's wonderful documentary honors both by preferring neither.

I could not love it more.

As one watches it, certain questions may arise. But don't worry - the answers are fascinating.

While I can understand any reluctance to view the personal business of others, Polley moves beyond the routine of therapy to shape an expressive and beautifully considerate documentary.

With Stories We Tell, actress-turned-director Sarah Polley has proven herself a consummate filmmaker, transforming an incredible personal story into a playful and profound investigation into the nature of storytelling itself.

Eventually, the formalistic strictures of the documentary fall away and Polley - her entire family, really - is left facing the reality of the past as the cameras roll.

Polley imaginatively fills in the past through a hybrid of documentary and fiction [for] knowing relevance to oral history, testimonial evidence, and what makes a family.

What I can say is that the movie is dramatically compelling, journalistically fascinating, cinematically profound, and intellectually challenging.

Sheds fascinating light on Polley's art.

Polley mines her own life to strip naked the essence of storytelling, and what it is about folklore that makes it so essential in shaping our perceptions about who we are and where we come from.

Stories We Tell starts out as a simple investigation into the life of a mother that director Sarah Polley barely knew and slowly turns into a documentary that is as good as any movie you will see this year.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/stories_we_tell/

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