For a brief moment while watching Truth, I thought of Scorsese's The Aviator. Although Egoyan doesn't sustain the feeling, there are times when Truth basks in a sense of informality, of being made primarily to entertain during lighter moments early in the film. Clearly Hitchcock is invoked in a scene when Colin Firth confronts Alison Lohman. Otherwise Egoyan evokes specific times and places of the past without resorting to "quoting" from other filmmakers.

Even the best relationships in Egoyan films are tenuous and Truth is no exception. Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth essentially live together only for the duration of their professional partnership. Seen fifteen years after their breakup, Firth lives alone in a house overlooking Los Angeles, while Bacon is pointedly filmed alone in a large office, isolated from his staff. Both truth and lies can break relationships. As in other Egoyan films, the remaining characters are isolated from each other.

Curiously this film has gotten released almost simultaneously with Jerry Lewis' autobiographical Dean and Me (A Love Story). One of the plot points of Truth is that the Lewis character is writing his own autobiography, that is to say, his own version of the truth. If Lanny Morris is not quite Jerry Lewis, between his own confessions in Nick Tosches' biography of Dean Martin, and his performance as Buddy Love and Jerry Langford one can glimpse enough to recognize that the character is not totally fictionalized. Maybe the reality of Rupert Holmes' novel, the basis of the movie, was a catalyst for Lewis to tell his version of the story of Dean and Jerry.