I talked about Sarah Polley’s masterpiece of personal cinema last year when it was released here in Canada, but since it wasn’t released in the US until 2013, and is making a number of critics’ year-end lists and taking home awards this season, I might as well reemphasize how incredible Stories We Tell is. It’s incredible, you guys.
The less that’s revealed about it before seeing it, the more power it has. It’s a story about Polley’s family, with personal details that were withheld by the press specifically for the sake of Polley being able to put her version of the story out herself (she’s actually a fairly well known former child star in Canada).
What results is a deep exploration of the nature of story itself: the role and importance of narrative in the human impulse to make sense of our lives and relationships, the often under-appreciated involvement of the storyteller in the presentation of a story, and the countless perspectives from which a story—or more accurately, stories—can be told. The thing I forget when I think about the film’s high-minded ideas, but truly one of the pleasures of the film, is how candid and lovely this family is. They make you forget that this documentary is indeed a brilliantly thoughtful and subtle work of utter genius.
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