Movie review: 'Stories We Tell'

Since I'm apparently taking a totally unplanned hiatus from the theater at the moment, I figured it was high time I started catching up on some of the new DVD releases. With that in mind, I wanted something different. I wanted a great documentary. After an informal poll of some cinephile friends, I found myself putting Sarah Polley's latest film, Stories We Tell, in the player.

It's been 24 hours exactly since I watched the last frame of Stories We Tell, and I'm still thinking about it. This is a truly fascinating, incredibly ambitious attempt by Polley, an actress and director (Take This Waltz, Away From Her) to tell the remarkable story of her life from multiple perspectives of her various family members.

I won't give away too much, but let's just say that Sarah Polley's family is quite interesting and extremely complicated. All great families are though, aren't they? Everyone in nearly every family has secrets. Everyone tells stories, and while some might be similar, the details in the narrative are often slightly different. Our own experiences shape our memories, and that sometimes allows us to see different sides of the same truth. That, to me, is the crux of Stories We Tell.

Here is the trailer:

Stories We Tell - Official Trailer [HD]

If you are a fan of storytelling, you owe it to yourself to give Stories We Tell a shot. Is it a perfect documentary? Not necessarily, it feels a bit long, but it's pretty darn amazing and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it gets a Best Documentary Oscar nomination.

What struck me, is how Stories We Tell lingered in my mind, long after the credits rolled. This documentary is so personal and so profoundly authentic. It makes you think hard about your own memories of events in your life: how you interpret them, how you reconcile them and how you, at times, must learn to let some things go in order to live as a reasonably happy and well-adjusted person.

Photo courtesy of Paste Magazine