Stories We Tell Reviews
Top CriticTakes the proposition that reality is more dramatic than fiction and tests it out in a startlingly original, even head-spinning way.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
Polley'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.
Deadspin
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.
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
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.
ScreenCrush
A study on how facts have repercussions and are interpreted in different ways by different people.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7/10
Polley has gone meta-exuberantly, entertainingly, with all her heart.
Movie Nation
Self indulgent, yes. But few autobiographical documentaries can boast of the jaw-dropping revelations of this one.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Capital Times (Madison, WI)
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Spirituality and Practice
A groundbreaking documentary written and directed by Sarah Polley about family secrets, memory, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Slant Magazine
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Film Threat
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
[Stories We Tell] leaves you wondering about the nature of truth and wanting to know more about the hidden lives of those around us.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
The film is oscillating from intriguing to dull, revealing to repetitious, frank to disingenuous, and moving to manipulative.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Sarah Polley's brave quest to uncover her family's deepest secrets unfolds like a thriller, one where the resolution is literally part of her DNA.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Tthe probing, emotionally devastating documentary that was, for this critic and many others, the revelation of the first week of the Venice Film Festival."
