Stories We Tell
Sarah Polley

She moved us with Away from Her and divided us with Take this Waltz, now actor turned director Sarah Polley brings her most remarkable film to German shores. Using documentary as her toolkit and pivoting her story on interviews with her family and the eloquent, heart wrenching narration of her nurturing dad Mike, Polley sets out to finally determine who her biological father is but instead finds something stranger. A devastating, beautiful film about fatherhood and memory, Stories We Tell picks apart the documentary rulebook before opening a window to that most endearing of bonds.

Tracks
John Curran

Mia Wasikowska gives a windswept, organic central performance in this walkabout film that stays light on its feet while sidestepping many of the pseudo spiritual pitfalls these types of self discovery adaptations tend to take.

She plays Robyn Davidson. An Australian woman who in 1977 set out with her dog Digitty- and four Camels whom she had personally trained- to walk from Alice Springs to  the west coast, a journey of roughly 1,700 miles. She tells us she’s sick of the pessimism of her class, sex and generation. We also learn that she lost her mum. To fund her trip she accepts a deal with the national geographic for a concluding article on her journey and for a photographer (played by rising star Adam Driver) to join her at certain points along the way. He seems to represent everything she’s trying to escape and yet, the two form a bond.

Expressing such raw free spirited emotion on an often populist and, let’s be honest, capitalist medium can prove awfully tricky. Pretention seems to lurk at every corner and yet director John Curran looks to have pulled it off. He keeps things grounded and natural while capturing all of the skin tones, hues and shades which his native outback has to offer. Worth the journey.

A Long Way Down
Pascal Chaumeil

Jesse, Jesse, Jesse… What happened bitch? A mere six months after the Breaking Bad curtain rapturously closed, co-star Aaron Paul finds himself in the cinematic wilderness. His latest subpar outing is a Nick Hornby adaptation (a wandering cinematic beast all its own) which finds four would-be suicides (autopilot Pierce Brosnon, misused Toni Collette, irritating Imogen Poots) on the roof of London’s fictional Toppers House on new year’s eve. The group form a pact to keep themselves intact till Valentine’s Day and worthless schmaltz ensues. Do us all a favour and jump.

 

Oldboy

A cinder-block shaped Josh Brolin grunts and groans his way through this fine remake of Park Chan-wook’s Korean-Wave favourite. He plays Joe, a despicable drunk ad-man who is framed for his wife’s murder and left in single room confinement for twenty years before being mysteriously released. Lee took a mighty risk taking on such a beloved cult hit but fans can breathe a collective sigh of relief. He keeps it visceral and strange while, quite remarkably, upping Park’s wicked videogame violence. He even gives a short cameo to a certain squid- and a slightly bigger one for a certain hammer…

  

The Counselor

Like a penalty skied over in the Champions League final, the shear catastrophic calibre of this film is a sight to behold. Michael Fassbender stars as a legal aid to the criminal elite who finds himself in hot water when a sewage truck full of Heroine goes missing on the U.S.-Mexico border. Fassbender is just one of many glittering names responsible but, regretfully, much of the blame must rest on the weighted debut screenplay of Pulitzer Prize winner Cormac McCarthy- or perhaps whomever let him loose... Oh, and Cameron Diaz has sex with a Ferrari.

Carrie

Chloë Grace Moretz takes on the infamous roll of a teenage social outcast with supernatural powers for the third adaptation of Steven King’s debut novel. Ms. Moretz leads a strong female cast with Judy Greer as her supportive teacher and Julianne Moore playing mother dearest as director Kimberly Pierce takes aim at a younger demographic. The results are decent despite lacking the strangeness of Brian De Palma’s classic but- in light of recent events- seeing kids get mowed down in a U.S. school gymnasium just doesn't sit right. 

Back to showcase their picks from the international film community’s elite festival circuit is Berlin’s increasingly sleek looking Around the World in 14 Films and following on from a rather high calibre year, the self-proclaimed festival of festivals has found a selection worthy of such a title with 4 continents and 15 countries represented over this terrific program. It all kicks off in Kino Babylon with A Separation director Asgahr Farhadi’s The Past. Tahar Rahim and Bérénice Bejo both star as Farhadi swaps Tehran with Paris for another familial drama. Legendary space cadet Alejandro Jodorowski will be in attendance as the festival screens his understandably surreal autobiographical film The Dance of Reality. Jem Cohen mixes a visual poem on Vienna with a charming peripheral love story in his quietly beautiful Museum Hours. Out east, Jia Zhangke expresses the bitterness and disillusionment in Chinese society with his violently subversive A Touch of Sin while Hirokazu Kore-Eda continues to find great young performers with his latest effort Like Father, Like Son. Both picked up gongs at Cannes last May. Screening in Thalia Potsdam, Inside Llewyn Davis- the Coen’s wonderfully lonesome take on the pre-Dylan folk scene in New York- offers the festival’s biggest hitter but if there’s one film to seek out, it comes from a little further north as Toronto born Sarah Polley examines our relationship with fatherhood and memory in her soaring documentary heartwrencher Stories We Tell.

Sarah Polley’s third feature after 2006’s deeply moving Away From Her and last year’s puzzlingly drab Take This Waltz is a fascinating and emotional look at family life and the choices and random occurrences which ultimately make us who we are.

A candid- warts and all- documentary, Polley creates a collage of different mediums and perspectives to tell us the story of her family’s past and her own unique place in it. Through the story of her deceased mother, a vibrant and charismatic woman, we discover much about Polley’s upbringing and the fascinating story of how she came to be. Interviews from her various family members and associates are mixed with super 8 home movie, an ever enduring tool. Her family are a bright and lively crowd and the interviews flow with ease. They are funny, endearing and insightful. Not convinced by the clarity of memory, Polley attempts to show a balanced and fair portrayal of the past by giving everyone involved a chance to have their say and fight their corner. An effort which she admits is ultimately in vein given her eventual power in the editing room.

As the cast of interviewees flows by the real star emerges in Polley’s father, a retired actor and a real gent. His interviews are strong and their relationship is the most significant but his narration is what drives it all home.  Elegantly written and wonderfully delivered as his daughter sits recording. It lifts the film to a different level and shows us a window to that most endearing of bonds.