A Story to Question, Word for Word
Ben BrantleyNovember 19, 2013: Oscar Wilde’s warning that “the truth is rarely pure and never simple” should be affixed to all documentaries, whatever their form or content. Most television watchers are, by now, savvy enough to understand that there ain’t much reality in reality shows. But what about journalistic exposés à la Michael Moore, or family anatomies à la “Capturing the Friedmans” or particularly biographical studies of various eminences that allow the subjects to speak for themselves? Life and time teach us that no narrators are reliable, especially regarding the stories of their own lives.
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