Long Time Running

Starring the Tragically Hip. Directed by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. Screens Thursday, Sept. 14, at 3:30 p.m. at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and Friday, Sept. 15, at 9:45 a.m. at the Scotiabank Theatre. Also opens Thursday at major theatres. 97 minutes. PG

It is, frankly, impossible to imagine anyone ever coming up with a more powerful or poignant statement on the Tragically Hip’s legacy and the sacred place it holds in this country’s collective heart than the hometown (maybe) farewell performance broadcast live from Kingston’s K-Rock Centre via the CBC to nearly a third of the Canadian population on Aug. 20 of last year.

That catalytic moment of shared, nationwide celebration-in-grieving will stand into the future, for those who participated in it, as an indelible “where were you when . . . ?” cultural/historical benchmark akin to the lunar landing or the Kennedy assassination — or, to invoke a couple of hockey references more in keeping with Gord Downie’s lyrical preoccupations, Paul Henderson’s game-winning goal against the Soviets in the 1972 “Summit Series” or that grim summer day in 1988 when we found out the Edmonton Oilers were trading Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings. It was a one-off. It will never be duplicated. No one’s getting that specific feeling back again.

Should you, however, desire to enrich that once-in-a-lifetime experience — indeed, the entire once-in-a-lifetime experience that was the Hip’s entire 2016 Man Machine Poem tour — with a better understanding in hindsight of just how astronomically high the odds were stacked against that momentous Kingston gig or any of the cross-Canada dates that built up to it ever happening at all, Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier’s thoroughly engrossing and genuinely uplifting new documentary Long Time Running is a perfect companion piece. This is a story of strength, defiance and the powerful bonds of rock-’n’-roll brotherhood sans pareil.

In short, only Downie himself believed he was capable of pulling off an entire national tour after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in late 2015 and subsequently undergoing invasive and debilitating surgery and radiation treatment to stave off the inevitable. “I did not think there was any chance in hell we were gonna make it to the tour,” confesses guitarist Rob Baker early in the film. And yet he and bandmates Gord Sinclair, Paul Langlois and Johnny Fay and the extended, family-like crew with which the Tragically Hip has surrounded itself for the past three decades pull together behind their lifelong friend to make it happen, yielding results that far exceed the expectations of anyone involved and ultimately transcend the tragic circumstances underlying the storyline.

The trajectory observed between a tentative first rehearsal caught on smartphone by Downie’s brother, Pat, wherein a frail, thoroughly bearded Gord who can barely remember song titles, let alone entire verses, feels his way through the first stanzas of “Escape Is At Hand for the Travellin’ Man” and the gigantic version of “Grace, Too” later shot at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto or the devastating “Ahead by a Century” clipped from Kingston that concludes the film is astonishing.

Baichwal and de Pencier — a duo previously known for cerebral docs such as Manufactured Landscapes and Watermark conscripted to make the film a mere five days before the tour kicked off in Victoria last July — gather steam as rock-doc filmmakers along the way in tandem, gradually surrendering the artful structuralism of the early live scenes to a more dynamic and immersive vantage point in the crowd.

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I cried quietly through the entire Toronto International Film Festival premiere screening of Long Time Running at Roy Thomson Hall on Wednesday evening — an event attended by all the members of the Hip except Downie as well as, for some reason, Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe — and I was not alone, but the film is anything but maudlin. It is, in fact, often quite funny, with much of the humour supplied by Downie himself.

He confesses the dark secret of his Bee Gees fanhood, reveals that the neckerchiefs he donned onstage nightly during the Man Machine Poem tour were actually “two socks stitched together,” rolls his eyes at the fact his spotty memory now requires six teleprompters’ worth of lyrics to get through a gig and allows himself to be filmed clad in naught but black Y-front underpants backstage whilst polishing his boots as a ritualistic balm against stage fright and trying in vain to don an unflatteringly tight metallic-silver suit in a manner that doesn’t make him look too “Elvis 1974.” His detailing of an awkward telephone exchange with idol Bobby Orr is far too droll to spoil.

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Downie’s admission that he lobbied to bring Langlois into the band all those years ago because he was afraid his best friend was going to move to Nashville in pursuit of a songwriting career and leave him alone and adrift in Kingston, meanwhile, is so sweetly emblematic of the deep, human forces that have bound the Hip together since 1984 that one doesn’t really require any further commentary on the matter.

You don’t get that much further, anyway. Long Time Running digs deeper than most have dug with the Tragically Hip — although Downie has a reputation for being guarded, the rest of the band has always kept a pretty low media profile, too — but Baichwal and de Pencier tend to let the fleeting scenes of tenderness and vulnerability they’ve captured behind the scenes in the moment speak for the group’s history. They’re both friends of the band, anyway, and were able to penetrate the wall of media silence imposed upon all things Hip upon the announcement of Downie’s illness last May because of that friendship; they weren’t likely to come up with a lot of dirt, even if there was any way at all that whatever the Tragically Hip at its most unhinged and debauched back in the day got up to could even compare to what, say, Nikki and Mötley Crüe got up to in The Dirt.

In any case, you know how the tour ultimately went down. There’s no suspense going in to Long Time Running, just the satisfaction of seeing love and hard work and determination hold the demons at bay for awhile. That’ll do for now.

“When it’s over, it’s done. And what then?” asks Baker at one point. Leave it to then to decide.

Downie’s ‘best case scenario,’ secret Bee Gees love: Moments from new Hip doc

Some highlights gleaned from Long Time Running: Moments from new Hip doc

THE DIAGNOSIS: The film tackles the 53-year-old frontman’s health early on, with Downie reflecting on how he felt when told he had glioblastoma — the most common and aggressive type of tumour to start in the brain. Neurosurgeon DJ Cook says he excised the bulk of the tumour after extensive talks with Downie about his wishes. “What would you prefer: living without being able to speak, or have new memories, but have more time with your family,” Cook asked the singer, “or should we limit things and ultimately give you less time on Earth, but have higher quality?” He says Downie chose a full temporal lobectomy, which gave him a “best case scenario” of five years of survival.

MEMORY PROBLEMS: Preparing to perform live presented Downie with huge challenges. “I actually couldn’t remember a damn thing. I think I started to cry,” the singer says of the first tour rehearsal. Dave (Billy Ray) Koster, the Hip’s technical director, recalls Downie’s struggles with “My Music at Work,” a song which repeats its title in the lyrics 18 times. “He would look at me and say, ‘Billy, what’s that line called?’ and then he would write it down,” Koster says. Downie ultimately used six teleprompters to help him get through the concerts.

MUSIC THAT WORKED: Surprisingly, Downie says he’d clear his mind by listening to hits from pop brothers the Bee Gees, who he credited as one of his guilty pleasures. “It would be like, the Bee Gees, who are my secret. Ya know — it’s not a band that you’re supposed to (like) — but God, I love them,” Downie bashfully says before launching into a rendition of one of their songs.

DOWNIE’S KISSES: Some fans seemed befuddled by Downie’s penchant for kissing his bandmates on the lips at each concert. The singer unabashedly addresses the unusual show of affection in the doc. “It went from hugs a bunch of years ago and it’s just grown and grown and grown,” he says. “These last ones were just me not letting go. I’ve got my arms around Robbie (Baker) and I’m just kissing the ear.”

DEEP CUTS: One of the highlights of the tour was hearing the Hip dig into their catalogue to perform rarities and lesser-known songs. Many fans knew those tracks by heart but the band admits they needed a refresher. “I said, ‘There’s some records where it’s going to be a challenge to get two songs we know well,’ ” guitarist Paul Langlois remembers. “I think the concept really arose because of the fairly good possibility that this would be the last one.”

THE FINAL SHOW: Standing in a packed stadium, with millions of Canadians watching on television, Downie says he inexplicably lost his past inhibitions and the nervousness he usually experienced in front of cameras. “I was having none of those sensations,” he says. “But then I realized, I haven’t said anything.” Downie says that thought was what inspired his impassioned address about the plight of Indigenous people in Canada.

The Canadian Press