96% Stories We Tell

All Critics (51) | Top Critics (25) | Fresh (49) | Rotten (2)

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.

Sarah Polley's documentary is a startling mixture of private memoir, public inquiry, and conjuring trick.

Polley was right to follow her instincts, though, in not attempting to tie everything up. She recognizes that family histories are necessarily contradictory, crazymaking, and essentially unfathomable.

What unfolds is a riveting drama that grows even more so as it plays out.

Don't be fooled by its deceptively simple title or the hesitant, unassuming way it begins. Writer-director Sarah Polley's "Stories We Tell" ends up an invigorating powerhouse of a personal documentary, adventurous and absolutely fascinating.

A brilliant, thought-provoking documentary.

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.

Where Polley's work goes from mere family movie to something much greater is in how she uses her own quest for answers to illuminate why & how we tell stories in the first place, especially in the form of film.

Polley's compassion and curiosity again mark her as both a heartfelt and unforgiving filmmaker.

Suspenseful, unpredictable, mature, tender and funny. A triumph.

The movie is convincingly built around the essential truth that we are ultimately defined by our loved ones' memories and perceptions.

A genre-twisting documentary with a fictional vibe that playfully bares the elusive truths about a family of storytellers.

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

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