Where the Truth Lies

—1. Overview (multimedia)
—2. Reviews and Blogs
—3. Cast and Crew
—4. Photo Pages
—5. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—6. Posters (Kevin Bacon)
—7. Production Notes
—8. Spiritual Connections
—9. Presentation Downloads

Lies can be destructive. So, too, can the truth.

Lenny Morris and Vince Collins were a comedy team back in the 1950s. They were in films and worked night clubs. They had an annual telethon to raise money for polio. They were well known and loved by many.

When the body of Maureen O’Flaherty was discovered in their hotel room, it turned into a great mystery. The two comics had alibis that kept them out of trouble, but the mystery went unsolved. Even though they managed to survive the scandal, their partnership didn’t. They soon split up and went their separate ways. They had had a great relationship as a duo. How could it end so suddenly? What had come between them?

Atom Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies explores the way truth and lies can become so intertwined that the truth may no longer matter, even if it can be determined. The process of hiding the truth poisons the well of relationship for years to come.

The film bounces back and forth between time periods and between voices. We hear Vince and Lenny tell their versions of what happened during their time together, and most importantly, their stories of Maureen’s death. The stories are being told to Karen O’Connor, a young journalist trying to find the truth. Hers is another voice in the storytelling. She has her own secret relationship with the pair, and develops more secrets as she interacts with them. They tell her lies; they tell her truths. She tells them lies and truths as well.

As the stories unfold, there are lots of twists along the way. It isn’t until the end, that we discover the truth that ruined the lives of these two men precisely because they never really knew the truth. They assumed they knew, but they didn’t. Even as they tried to hide what they thought was the truth from the world, they were in fact only perpetuating lies that they had believed.

In watching the film, I was aware of the way that deception can take on a life of its own. Even when everybody knows there is deception, they don’t want to talk about it or bring it to light. The longer they try to keep the deception going, the more harm it ends up doing.

This kind of dynamic takes place in all kinds of abusive relationships. It is sometimes referred to as “the elephant in the room.� Everyone knows the elephant is there, but no one will acknowledge it. People move around it and act like it isn’t there, but in reality it is the most important thing in life, because everyone spends so much time pretending to ignore it.

In the film, because everyone spends so much time trying to avoid the elephant, they miss the chance to bring healing to those who are hurting – and everyone is hurting. If only they had dealt with the things that were separating them from each other, they may have discovered a truth beyond the truth they thought they knew.

It should be noted that this film was released as Unrated, because otherwise it would have been NC-17. There are ample and explicit sex scenes that are important to the telling of the story. Egoyan is said to have tried to remove some of them, but was not able to get it to a level that the MPAA would have accepted as R rated without damaging the story (at least in Egoyan’s mind.)

—Overview