Movie Review: Long Time Running

Long Time Running **** / *****

Directed by: Jennifer Baichwal & Nicholas de Pencier.

 

I don’t say this often about any movie, but I will say it about Long Time Running – if you’re not Canadian, you’re just not going to get it. Sure, you could a fan of The Tragically Hip and be American – or from anywhere else – but I’m not sure that anyone outside of Canada can truly understand just what this band means to us inside of Canada. Part of that is undeniably because The Hip never did make it America – or anywhere other than Canada – because that made them all the more ours. As polite as our reputations suggest we are, Canadians also have more than a little bit of an inferiority complex – and we also don’t recognize our talented people until they make it in America. But The Hip were different – they helped to define what it means to be Canadian. When Gord Downie, the lead singer and lyricist of the band, was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer, and given only a couple years to live, Canada went into an extended period of mourning. Oddly though, Downie didn’t – he and his band mates decided to go on one last coast-to-coast tour, culminating with a hometown gig in Kingston Ontario, broadcast live to the whole country in August 2016. The ratings in Canada were astronomical. When Downie finally died last week, the documentary Long Time Running – which was mainly about that tour, but also about the band as a whole, and the country that spawned them – was played on national TV just a weeks after its premiere at TIFF, and limited theatrical release (it was schedule to run in November – but was moved up). If you’re Canadian, you almost definitely watch the concert – and cried – and now you can watch the documentary, and cry all over again.

 

In many ways, the doc is a standard issue musical documentary – with a lot of concert footage, interspersed with talking heads – mainly the band members themselves – describing their 30 year run. The concert footage – and there’s a lot – breaks one of the rules that I normally would follow in concert docs, as it shows the audience a lot. Most of the time, I find this distracting in these docs – I’m watching the doc to see the band perform, not some drunken idiots singing along – and yet it seems oddly appropriate in this film. Long Time Running is, after all, about more than The Tragically Hip and their last concert tour. It’s about more than Gord Downie, and his courageous battle with cancer, and the fact that he used some of the last of his energy to do it for the fans, and how he fought for what he believed in right to the bitter end. It is about Canada itself – and what the band meant to us. Therefore, seeing the audience singing along – people from all different age groups – is itself, quietly, subtly inspiring. The director Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier (who do not seem like natural choices for this doc, given their previous work, but do a great job just the same) – know intuitively when and what to show.

 

As with most music docs, your interest in this one will depend on how much you like The Hip. If you’re Canadian, then this one is for you. It’s one of those rare films that you know while you’re watching it that people will be watching it for years to come – it will become a Canadian staple. For those outside Canada, it may give you an idea of what The Hip means to those of us in Canada – but only a piece. The Hip is still ours – and always will be.