MisterWhiplash Actor/director Polley's first documentary Stories We Tell is about her family, and specifically about her mother and her history, leading up to a big question that is answered in the course of the film: who is Sarah's *real* father, and what happened? While some of the magic-tricks that Polley seems to be playing – mixing actual 8mm film footage shot of her family at the time with (albeit very smoothly transitioned) reenactments with actors playing her mother, father, siblings, and the lover who turned out to be her biological father – is a bit tiring near the end, it's ultimately a fantastic story, a wonderful and bittersweet look at the ties that bind, how we delineate truth and fiction, and that love is really what should count. It's power is when it is its simplest – or when we see Polley's father in a recording booth reciting some finely written narration for her daughter (her father, by the way, is a known British actor from Canada, Michael Polley).

The_late_Buddy_Ryan I've been a fan of Sarah Polley since "The Sweet Hereafter," and Michael P is memorable as one of the music-hall cutups in "Slings and Arrows" (which is on our shortlist of best TV series ever, btw). I guess it's interesting that even Canadian showfolk sometimes got up to mischief in the 70s; Sarah's no Errol Morris, but she does a pretty good job of rounding up the surviving members of her extended family (most of them quite charming) and "interrogating" them about what went on in those days. A fair number of online commenters have objected to the sly way that a few staged scenes, cleverly processed to look like vintage Super 8, are included in the film, but that only seems to underscore the point that the past can only be recovered through memory and the imagination. (It's pretty clear which scenes are staged and which are real home movies, I think.) I agree that the critics may have oversold this one, and it does go on a bit too long after the big reveal, but basically I'd recommend it.

l_rawjalaurence STORIES WE TELL opens with an extended shot of Michael Polley (director Sarah's father) reading out a prepared script in a recording studio, with his daughter facing him. This sequence serves as a metaphor for the entire film, which concentrates in depth on the nature of story- telling. It is fundamentally an autobiographical detective story, as Sarah interviews various members of her extended family to discover something about her late mother's life. We learn that her mother used to be an actress and performer; a vivacious soul who married Michael (a British actor) after having experienced a disastrous first marriage. Her marriage to Michael works fine for the first few years, but then things start to go wrong, and her mother ends up having an affair with film producer Harry Gulkin (one of Polley's interviewees). Michael and the family are based in Toronto; Gulkin in Montreal. As Sarah investigates more about this love-affair, she discovers something shocking about her own life that changes her perspective for ever. As she conducts her interviews, Polley realizes that different interviewees have different versions of 'the truth,' shaped not only according to their perceptions, but also by what they want to reveal on camera. Only by comparing different interviews can Polley reach at least an approximation about what 'really' happened to her mother and Gulkin, and the effect of their love-affair on Michael. One reviewer of this film has already asked "what is it REALLY about?" The answer to this question becomes clear: there is no such thing as a 'real' or 'definitive' interpretation of the past. We can only listen to different accounts, and make up our own minds, while realizing that our interpretation is no more or less definitive than other interpretations. Polley's film is both uncompromising yet sympathetic to the interviewees; sometimes they are prompted into revealing truths about themselves (which perhaps they had not previously admitted), but Polley - who appears on screen as well as directing the entire film - makes no judgment on them. This absorbing piece is essential viewing for anyone interested in the relativity of history, whether personal or otherwise.

DexIMF Intriguing, but not as emotionally overwhelming for the audience as it is for the storytellers. There is ever so palpable, cold detachment from the story's emotional spine. Maybe, it's because of the lack of perspective of the person who wanted this story to be out there- Sarah Polley herself. You can sense subtle reactions coming from her whenever she is on screen, for however little time, and build her point-of-view in your head. But that would be just another version of story in this baggage of different perspectives. Also, I would rather she hadn't filmed dramatized clips of real-life incidents and trust the audience's imagination.All that being said, it does not take away anything from the fact that "Stories We Tell" is a fascinating concept. If nothing else, it works as a brilliant think-piece on subjectivity of memories and distorted truth by different perspectives.