Stories We Tell

(MY MOTHER, THE SLUT.)

The story at the heart of this documentary was completely banal soap-opera nonsense, but the interviewees couldn't stop going on about just how ~AMAZING~ the story was. I wasn't impressed by the filmmaking, which was repetitive and the fake home movies took more away than they added. There was also quite a lot of victim-blaming, and I could have done without the second dose of tear-jerky at the end. There was no deep statement about the nature of truth and recollection here.

I was surprised at how quickly I lost interest in this. Polley talks constantly about how she wants to explore the theme of stories changing depending on who's telling them, but the story itself doesn't seem all that complicated and everyone seems to generally agree on what happened. I liked it for about an hour, and then all the details become clear and it just runs out of steam; there doesn't seem to be much worth considering about it beyond that.

The story is not very interesting and the meta observations are fairly obvious and simplistic. The "multiple perspectives"-angle is odd, since the story does not differ that much from person to person. It's strange to see the compulsion to act out everything that is being told in unconvincing home videos, but the "interview"-segments are at times touching - mainly due to the acting.

On the surface, this genre-bending documentary film sees Polley exploring family mysteries. But what she is really trying to get at (and she does so quite masterfully and with impressive control) is that the simple naked truth is elusive, pointless, and irrelevant. Life, and stories for that matter, is an amalgam of personal memories and interpretations which are in turn colored by varying emotional experiences and impressions. And that is what makes stories so affecting and meaningful.

Sarah Polley's documentary masterfully tells a personal story of her discovery of her true parentage, displaying raw emotional power through talking head interviews with her family members. The film's strength lies not just in Polley's remarkable story but also in the way it simultaneously shows how stories change through the telling of multiple tellers.

The biggest problem of this documentary is that the story of which different versions (though not really) are being given simply isn't interesting. Watch this instead: http://www.criticker.com/film/An_shab_ke_barun_amad/

Sarah Polley tries to "Capture the Friedmans" but the story is bland, and none of the many interviewees disagree about the overall narrative. With little else to keep one interested, it's hard not to start noticing Polley herself and her pretentious approach to what is essentially a narcissistic exercise.

Thoughtful, well put together look at a personal family history. It was engrossing but a little too long in its attempts to get everyone's views in,

Skillful documentary filmmaking with so-so content.

Very powerful movie with a very well told, genuine story...Almost like watching a Paul Auster book coming to life

Does an immaculate job of painting a dense family portrait anchored around a departed mother and her secrets, but the fundamental flaw is pointed out by one of the interviewees in the beginning - why should we care? The film works because it does a decent job of overcoming this obstacle, but still lacks broader significance. For better and worse this is a completely personal documentary, made as a kind of knowledge quest or therapy session for the filmmaker. 'This is not for you.'

Polley manages to make the film feel personal and driven by curiosity, even though she clearly knew the whole story going in. The film illustrates the elusive nature of complete truth both narratively and formally, which is its greatest strength. That the story is itself a heartfelt search for truth about one's familial identity refracted through the lens of personal and communal memory only adds a tantalizing layer to this substantive work of art.

Polley's story is so amazing that the film manages to be transfixing, even as the presentation is dull. I have no problem with the idea of fake home videos, but the staged stuff is a little too on the nose. At times, it feels like a "dramatic re-creation" in some corny A&E crime show. It doesn't help that the rest of the film is just the typical "talking head" style of a less personal documentary. It's almost as though the film is an amazing and affecting in spite of what's actually on screen.

"aşk ne kadar kısa ve unutmak ne kadar uzun. Pablo Neruda"

WoW!! What a Interesting Story & Documentary!!!

Sometimes it's people's love for others that enrich a story more than the story itself does. It's how you describe them, recall them. I feel like I knew Diane Polley as much as her own daughter did by the end of this film.

Very interesting tale, elevating family drama into art.

Anslaget med "Skinny Love" sätter omedelbart stämningen. En pretentiös b-skådis sade en gång till mig att konst handlar om att förstå det mänskliga. Den här filmen försöker göra just detta och det är rörande och bitvis mycket roligt, men tyvärr lite långt mot slutet. Men stanna kvar ända in i mål! @BAM

FOR A DOCUMENTARY it was good and wudda scored higher, but if we're putting it on the scale with other movies...

A warm and interesting documentary. I found that getting her siblings together to reminisce about their mother was the stronger side of Sarah Polley's opus. Although the father identity mystery played well too and complemented the rest. However, the bigger question I started asking, as the credits roll, is what did I just watch? Fact or fiction? Why were all her family played by actors? How much is based on truth? It's a brand new mystery, and hints at just how complex families can be...

An amazing look at an unbelievable story. I want to watch again and look at the directors intent to also look at the way we make documentaries.

The film begins slow & unassuming; perhaps it had to, in order to leave the viewer guessing as to what kind of impression it'll make. The richness came, not from the story itself, but it's the execution that subtly, yet emotionally, explores the essence of how "perspective" & "opinion" will undoubtedly shape the stories of every person's existence. It is as if Sarah discovers her reason for creating the documentary along with the viewer, which in my mind, left me feeling included & satisfied.

I found the specifics interesting enough to keep me going, but the film lives and dies on its ability to illuminate the little, more universal, things tangential to the content. The way people's memories and perceptions change over time, the way they value, or devalue, those of others, the way they focus on certain things at the expense of others, the clash between objectivity and subjectivity when representing emotions and personal thoughts, particularly those of someone no longer with us.

I felt disappointed that the focus of this documentary was on the mother, who no longer lives. The story surrounding it isn't special. You can find more interesting stories in any family. It made a big deal about everyone having a different take on what happened and supposedly by adding them all together we get to the truth. No. All the people being interviewed gave nearly the same account on what happened. Best part are some touching moments and I really liked Michael. But it's way too long.

Beautiful!

Waste of time. The most uninteresting subject for a documentary.

Just impeccably made. The story may not be the more important or interesting, but it is heartfelt and beautiful. A wonderful example of craft from Polley.

A meta-documentary, which both deconstructs the conventions of the documentary, while also sticking to them to tell the larger narrative. It's not a search for truth, for that task would be fruitless; rather, it's a reflection of the multiple truths we hold and how they form, forgive me, the stories we tell ourselves. If there is a center to this film, it's Polley's attempt to get closer to her dead mother -- an emotional task -- through the lives of others that she touched.

Kind of a letdown. I guess it's my fault. I was expecting way too much of it.

We all have our point-of-view.

Turns a painful personal story into a powerful mediation on the nature of storytelling and the Rashomon effect. A brave work, if largely unremarkable.

Possibly not the most important documentary I've ever seen, but certainly one of my favorites. You wouldn't think a film could be this charming and this thought-provoking at the same time. Wonderfully well made.

I really like these poetic, nostalgic and playful takes on personal material. It's deceptively simple. At first glance the story seems like a banal family matter, but Polley makes it universal, full of heart and essentially human.

A documentary that pushes against the boundaries of the form while reaffirming so much of what I love about both film and fiction. Through its combination of home video, interview, narration, and reenactment, Polley chronicles the struggle of her and her loved ones to capture the truth of their shared histories and her departed mother, and its many perspective shifts reveal as much about the tellers as they do the story, all while recognizing the arbitrary boundaries that mark beginning and end.

Not quite as good as I hoped. The content was sparse and dragged thin across the almost two hour runtime. The story of a wife cuckolding her husband is only interesting for so long. Still, a pretty worthy piece that tries to make its point.

Warm, interesting, and fun documentary that ends perfectly.

A wonderful, labyrinthine look at the nature of truth, the power of storytelling, and the importance of family - told in a compelling collage of narration, interview and footage both artificial and genuine. The "crux" of the narrative, so to speak, isn't really a game-changer in the same way as that of "Dear Zachary"; it's more of a jumping-off point for introspection and examination. And it works wonderfully.

An exceptionally candid and personal documentary that mixes interviews, re-enactments (acted both by actors and the actual people involved) and genuine old footage to form a rich tapestry of a period in Polley's family history. Beautifully honest, both about an intensely personal event and the making of the film itself, this is both a moving document of a family history and a fascinating look at stories and indeed the telling thereof.

This a very interesting film. The movie deals with family secrets and how everyone has a take on personal events. The movie is never boring and there are a lot of interesting people and subject matter in the film.

I'm not sure Polley had any idea that her film would stray so far from the concept of storytelling to encompass such a buckshot of emotions and themes, but Stories We Tell works; it's funny, poignant, and thoroughly engrossing.

I don't find it to be this awe-inspiring, profound and deeply fascinating movie to the extent that some people do, but 80 still makes it a great movie in my eyes. It does do a decent job of dissecting truth in our everyday lives and documentaries, and the central story is entertaining (but honestly not THAT entertaining). However, it is an honest and sometimes awkward (in a good way) movie about a very personal issue. Drags a tad as well though.

This intensely personal doc could've been much more manipulative, and Polley deserves credit for avoiding that. But I wish I could see the profundity that others do in the film. Separating the truth from the mythology is the essence of most documentary filmmaking and journalism, and the difficulty doing so with a topic as private as a family seems almost too obvious. I don't think people are as woefully unaware of the "unreliable narrator" as this film makes it out to be.

Very bold documentary by Polley which also demands a lot from her family and gets you thinking about your family and memories. It gets a bit repetative and could have used a trim but further shows that Polley is someone to keep an eye on.

A really interesting look behind the scenes of a more or less typical family, slowly revealing how people keep up facades in order to live and project a 'normal' life. Joanna polley states at the beginning "why would anyone care what's going on in our family?", and it's this honesty that makes it appealing. It felt easy to translate into your own life. As a kid the world makes perfect sense, and as you grow older you learn some truths that will have its simplicity gradually desintegrating.

Overstays its welcome a bit at the end, particularly once they start trying to sum things up and say what it all meant, but the storytelling is quite arresting. The figure of Diane, Sarah's mother, stands at the center of the film and holds it together. When the film moves on to side matters like Polley's relationship with her fathers (biological and non) it loses focus and comes perilously close to becoming the self indulgent navel gazing it could have become.

What it has that so many other personal documentaries don't have is an understanding by those involved that they're contributing to merely one version of the truth.

Polley's story is fascinating, but it is when the film begins to break down and examine itself that it becomes most interesting. great stuff.

Best movie I've seen in 2013 so far.

Simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking and also just a marvel of filmmaking.

Billed as some sort of documentary version of Rashomon, which it totally isn't. These superficial notions of a story about mythmaking and perception are simply a front that give Polley a pretext for conducting interviews with members of her family who are one and all quite clearly uncomfortable with recalling these "Stories." Each joke and nervous smile indicates an act of avoidance. In this case, the truth isn't elusive because of mistaken memories, but because of the pain in their recollection

A documentary involving the filmmaker's family that is a cross between Citizen Kane and El Sur--not in terms of quality, but subject matter and themes. Needless to say this film is no where near those other two, which may not be fair. Still, from a story standpoint, I didn't find the film very compelling, although it is mildly interesting. From a thematic/idea standpoint, I didn't think the film revealed a lot either. El Sur is streaming on hulu , and I'd recommend that and CK instead. ps 72

I've gone from not liking Sarah Polley (the actress) much to liking her (the director) a lot. Stories We Tell is a very well put together film about the nature of storytelling, perceptions and memory. It's not perfect, with editing that leaves lengthy digressions that should give depth to the story confusing and a bit out of place, and a process behind the editing which goes unaccounted for in the story of making this film - a bit of a problem, given what the film is about. Regardless, great.