TIFF Mini-Reviews - The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal
The opening film for TIFF this year was the world premiere of a new 4-part documentary series on the iconic Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip called No Dress Rehearsal. The documentary, funded by Amazon Prime, where it will be released online later this month, was directed by Mike Downie, the brother of the Hip’s late frontman, Gord Downie. I’ll say right up front that it’s hard to give an unbiased review of this documentary because I’m such a big fan of the band and their music. There are probably at least three categories of people who will potentially watch this doc: fans of The Hip; Canadians who are aware of them but would not have considered themselves big fans; and those who don’t know anything about the band (mostly people outside of Canada). It’s hard to know how people in each of those groups would react to this 4+ hour film project.
The Tragically Hip in the early days. The amount of footage the documentary has is extraordinary.
Fans of the band will absolutely love it. The depth of archival clips and photos, along with interviews from everyone involved in the band, as well as well-known Canadian fans (Will Arnett, Dan Aykroyd, Justin Trudeau, etc.) provide new insight into the origins of the group and their rise to prominence, but also the interpersonal dynamics that often weren’t on public display. By the time we get to the 4th episode, and Gord Downie’s heartbreaking cancer diagnosis, it was amazing how quickly the quality of the air in the theater deteriorated, as that’s the only explanation I can have for the fact that I constantly had something in my eye.
For those less familiar with the band, I still believe that this will stand out as an exceptional rock documentary about the rise of a small-town band to iconic status, the trials and tribulations of the group, and their inevitable evolution along the way. For those who know nothing about the Hip, this is a perfect introduction to why they’re known as “Canada’s band” and achieved a legendary standing unlike any band in Canadian history, and gained a resonance with the population that is unlikely ever to be matched again. Gord Downie once sung, “It’s still not enough. Nothing short of everything, nothing short of everything’s enough.” The same could be said about trying to explain the phenomenon of The Tragically Hip. But this documentary comes close.
