Stories We Tell (2013)
Average Rating: 8.5/10
Reviews Counted: 18
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 8.4/10
Critic Reviews: 10
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
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User Ratings: 1,040
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Movie Info
In this inspired, genre-twisting new film, Oscar (R)-nominated writer/director Sarah Polley discovers that the truth depends on who's telling it. Polley is both filmmaker and detective as she investigates the secrets kept by a family of storytellers. She playfully interviews and interrogates a cast of characters of varying reliability, eliciting refreshingly candid, yet mostly contradictory, answers to the same questions. As each relates their version of the family mythology, present-day
May 10, 2013 Limited
Roadside Attractions
- Official Site
Cast
-
Michael Polley
Narrator, Storyteller -
Harry Gulkin
Storyteller -
Susy Buchan
Storyteller -
John Buchan
Storyteller -
Mark Polley
Storyteller -
Joanna Polley
Storyteller -
Cathy Gulkin
Storyteller -
Marie Murphy
Storyteller -
Robert MacMillan
Storyteller -
Anne Tait
Storyteller -
Deirdre Bowen
Storyteller -
Victoria Mitchell
Storyteller -
Mort Ransen
Storyteller -
Geoffrey Bowes
Storyteller -
Tom Butler
Storyteller -
Pixie Bigelow
Storyteller -
Claire Walker
Storyteller -
Rebecca Jenkins
Diane Polley -
Peter Evans
Michael Polley -
Alex Hatz
Harry Gulkin
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All Critics (18) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (17) | Rotten (1)
Takes the proposition that reality is more dramatic than fiction and tests it out in a startlingly original, even head-spinning way.
Top CriticPolley's documentary, Stories We Tell, attempts to unravel some of the mysteries of her own family's life, even as it stretches far beyond the confines of your standard navel-gazing autobiography.
Polley has gone further into the thorny subject of forgiveness than any of her peers. Her movies ache with ethical quandary; Stories We Tell aches the most.
This playful and elegiac documentary is wholly of a piece with Sarah Polley's fiction work, and just as rewarding.
Canadian documentary skilfully deploys some ambitious creative gambits to explore the director's own family background.
Polley has gone meta-exuberantly, entertainingly, with all her heart.
Both of Sarah Polley's previous movies were well-observed, if a bit uneven, but they hold the key to what makes "Stories We Tell" so terrific.
A study on how facts have repercussions and are interpreted in different ways by different people.
Self indulgent, yes. But few autobiographical documentaries can boast of the jaw-dropping revelations of this one.
Would "Stories We Tell" have been as compelling if Polley didn't add all the post-modern devices to it? Probably. But the way she tells the story forces us to examine the too-tidy narratives of the stories we tell ourselves.
A groundbreaking documentary written and directed by Sarah Polley about family secrets, memory, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Sarah Polley is much more interested in the malleability of memory and the consequential refractions felt throughout her kin rather than telling a linear narrative.
Polley points the camera at members of her own family and not only informs on where her directorial efforts stem from but confirm her as one of the best and most interesting filmmakers working today.
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