Elbert Ventura in The New Republic:
In the new documentary Tell Them Who You Are, director Mark Wexler trains the camera’s gaze on his father, Haskell Wexler, legendary cinematographer and, it turns out, ambivalent parent. A tribute that doubles as an exorcism of a legacy, the movie veers from biography to autobiography: what seemed at first a simple hagiography becomes a painful exploration of father-son tensions. After reenacting a lifetime’s worth of resentments, the two men fumble toward something like reconciliation. That “closure,” with all its hackneyed implications, is reached should hardly be a surprise. Less a depiction of the healing process, the movie is in fact the healing process itself, the catalyst that brings about their rapprochement. It’s filmmaking as therapy–and it feels no less flimsy than the counterfeit epiphanies of a Dr. Phil session.
With its weakness for the confessional and hunger for histrionics, Wexler’s movie is hardly unique. It is, however, an exponent of a newly ascendant genre in American movies. Embracing the first-person, Wexler has made a filmic memoir, equal parts confession, critique, and psychoanalysis. It’s an approach that can be seen in other notable movies of the last couple of years…
More here.