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| billyweeds |
 Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 5:42 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Saw Stories We Tell the other night and wasn't going to comment on it since I didn't feel the urge. But gromit's post has ferreted me out and I have to say I largely agree with him. The movie is exceedingly well made. (I was gobsmacked, for example, to find out at the end of the film that those "home movies" were in fact recreations.) Technically, Sarah Poiley did a marvelous job.
But overall I side with the sister who questions the value of these family revelations. There is something ultimately so-whattish about the entire enterprise. So her mother did some questionable things. (I won't reveal them because SPOILERS abound.) But in the end I really truly don't care all that much. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 7:39 am |
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| Billy, I'm not going to see the movie so can you tell me what her Mother's questionable acts were? You can white them out. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 8:12 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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marantzo wrote: Billy, I'm not going to see the movie so can you tell me what her Mother's questionable acts were? You can white them out.
She had an affair with a guy who turned out to be Sarah Polley's real father, one she never knew about. Then at the very end of the movie it turned out he wasn't the mother's only fling, but he was the father, proved through DNA. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 11:58 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Syd wrote: Sounds like an odd little film. Polley's a talented director, and I have a crush on her, so I'll probably see it at some point.
I didn't see Away From Her. The trailer seemed enough for me, though I was mildly intrigued with the casting of Julie Christie.
I didn't care much for Take This Waltz, though it was inoffensive enough.
Stories We Tell dresses up talking heads with re-creations and the father's narration, in a kind of hybrid form doc. But it all was a bit self-indulgent. I kept thinking of that doc about the Brit playwright who died young, which went whole hog on artifying a doc, having recreations, presentations of her plays, along with actors repeating the actual words of the interviewed participants, thereby completely eschewing conventional talking heads. I'm blanking of the name of that film right now .... |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 12:47 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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| Away from Her is about what real love is made out of. It's a good film, and remarkable for a director's first feature-length film. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 12:42 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
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| I've been a fan of Sarah Polley's since she acted in The Sweet Hereafter. and I've liked the films she's directed, Stories being one. I saw it as a portrait of someone no longer living...attempting to capture her spirit and her secrets. She came across as an interesting woman, quite different in demeanor from her daughter. And the secret was a big one especially for Sarah. Not everyone in the family wanted to participate. I think Sarah's detachment was remarkable in itself. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 1:27 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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billyweeds wrote: (I was gobsmacked, for example, to find out at the end of the film that those "home movies" were in fact recreations.) Technically, Sarah Poiley did a marvelous job.
The faux period home movies were well done and convincing/confusing. But there were hints throughout that they were phony. Some of the longer clips made me wonder who was filming and why, and made me wonder how/why there would be such footage. The clincher for me was the supposed footage of the mother's funeral, where the camera catches Harry in the back of the church and then zooms in on his face, which he reminded me of phony Guy Maddin silent films. There was just no reason he would have been singled out of a full church during an significant event, and the staging and slow zoom just seemed to drip with humor/irony.
But at the end of the film, I was left wondering which were real home vids and which were staged re-creations. |
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| knox |
| Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 8:55 am |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
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Location: St. Louis
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AO Scott wrote Nicole Holofcener quite the love letter in the NYT, regarding "Enough Said." Viewing will be tinged a bit with knowledge of star Gandolfini's passage, but glad he went out with a laugh.
Just saw The Spectacular Now and can heartily agree with Bill and Bart as to its successes as a naturalistic drama and the strong performances. I liked Miles Teller in Rabbit Hole, and you can see his growth as an actor since then is quite the quantum leap. This is not the sort of film I like, and I loved this, so that pretty much defines superior storytelling. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 12:55 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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| Nicole Holofcener is one of the best directors alive, and Enough Said sounds like one of her best. Frothing at the mouth here. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 4:06 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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Caught The Spectacular Now this weekend. It may be because I was on a date with the man I believe to be my future husband, but I enjoyed it tremendously. Miles Teller could be John Cusak's son, and Shailene Woodley is flat-out amazing. The most true-to-life portrayal of a teenage girl I've ever seen.
Only one, possibly two things bothered me (they are interrelated):
The mother tells Sutter that he's nothing like his dad, whom she describes as the most selfish person she's ever known. But surely Sutter's drinking is a genetic predispostion from his dad, right? And related to that, I hate the dad just being written off as a dead-beat. I'd have preferred if he was characterized as a man with serious addiction problems who could never make the choice between his life commitments and his intoxicants. Couldn't he at least have been shown as a man who loves his son, even if he's not capable of living up to his responsibilities? I hate seeing dads get beat up in the media (you know no one has ever made a movie where a dad says about a mother who just abaondoned her child "She's just selfish; her heart is this small." Not in Kramer vs. Kramer. Not even in Mommie Dearest. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 6:31 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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| Kind of agree, Joe, about dads getting beat up in various media, but in this case, I was able to believe that the bottle just owned that guy and he didn't have much left for a son popping in out of the blue after many years. Sometimes addiction can kill love, and the capacity to make real connections, and that grim truth is not going to be sugarcoated in a film like this. Fatherhood, in general, was not on trial in TSN. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 1:30 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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Mirgun and I found Stories We Tell totally engrossing with a wonderful twist end.
All art is self indulgent. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 4:04 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Marc wrote: Mirgun and I found Stories We Tell totally engrossing with a wonderful twist end.
All art is self indulgent.
To a degree, but turning a small family secret into a feature documentary seemed unnecessary. At least for the viewer.
I would have excised all the dithery comments about should we put this in the film, I'd rather the focus be on me and not the others, etc. I usually have little patience for documentaries about the filmmaker making the film. It's too easy and usually boring and takes away from a deeper treatment of the subject. I did find it interesting the father narrating a film about his own cuckoldry, and his rather 70's Why not? response to the revelation.
If you liked Stories We Tell, try The Arbor (Clio Barnard, 2010)
about the British playwright Andrea Dunbar, who died young a on barroom floor, and the traumas her children faced. I reference it because it has a similar but more complex documentary style, with the actual words/interviews of family members being mouthed by actors recreating events, plus scenes in which scenes from her autobiographical plays are staged in a way that blends into the action.
It's pretty ambitious and effective, if a little messy. Also, seems to me to have a lot more to say than Stories. Though that title The Arbor just doesn't stick with me.
Here was my initial review from back in the day.
And here's an interesting article about staged documentaries. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 5:00 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Marc wrote: Mirgun and I found Stories We Tell totally engrossing with a wonderful twist end.
All art is self indulgent.
Marc--What is the twist end you're talking about? (The rest of the post is in white since it involves spoilers.)
If you mean the revelation that the mother also slept with that other guy, this is not such a big deal. The DNA had proved Harry was the father, so there was no chance the younger guy was Sarah's dad. If that's what you mean by a "twist." |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 7:03 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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| I'd agree with Marc about how films that are criticized for being 'self-indulgent' and 'pretentious' could just as easily be considered 'personal' or 'ambitious', say. |
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