I love The Band and have listened to their music for years. Not long before Levon Helm passed away he did a concert tour and I saw him perform at Massey Hall in one of the best concerts I have ever attended so I had to see this documentary. It is notable in that it is the first Canadian documentary to be named the opening gala at TIFF and perhaps more so because the director is a young 26-year-old Canadian. Quite an accomplishment for someone starting out on their career. All that said I must say I did not think this movie was spectacular or worthy of its place in the festival. It is a pretty ordinary documentary about a remarkable rock band. One of the weaknesses might be that it is based on Robbie Robertson’s book: Testimony so it is very much a film about his career as a member of The Band and his memories of the members and its history. It is no secret that the group broke up after 16 years together and that Helm was extremely angry with Robertson as evidenced in his book: This Wheel’s on Fire. I think I hoped for a more objective doc about The Band and its rise and fall. Instead we get a very focussed look from Robertson’s perspective.

That was my disappointment, but the film does go into depth about The Band’s origins in Canada and the role that Ronnie Hawkins played in bringing the group together. It also puts real emphasis on the initial closeness of the members – hence the title—and how that influenced the unique sound they created. I also learned more about their personal struggles than I cared to know including drug addiction, car wrecks and health issues I did not need to know. I think my favourite member of the group after Levon was Garth Hudson who was much older than the others and the quietest. I did not learn enough, and the director was asked about that in the Q and A after the film. He did interview Hudson but said that the interview was cut because of Hudson’s age, describing him as quite elderly and that the interview did not work. This I guess contributed to what I found missing from the film. Again, Roher defended this by saying that he was hired to do a film about Robertson and his career which is fair enough but if you choose to see the film be aware that you will be looking through Robertson’s eyes. On the plus side you will see some amazing classic footage from the years they all lived in Woodstock in a house that is called Big Pink, from concerts and from archival interviews with the members and others like Eric Clapton and Bruce Springsteen among others. All very interesting. So the bottom line is that if you are a fan of The Band you should likely try to see this movie but I suspect you will be left thirsting for more.

Okay it’s the day before TIFF actually starts but I nonetheless took in a great documentary at the Hot Docs cinema. I confess that I really enjoy books and films that describe how movies or plays were created and presented. Two of my favourite books are Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard by Matt Taylor and We’ll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie by Noah Isenberg. This time I saw a movie that falls into the same category as these books. I confess I am not a huge musical fan although I have developed a taste for older musicals like Oklahoma and West Side Story. I should thank the Stratford Festival for drawing me in. Fiddler on the Roof is not one that I have really liked but this documentary made me pay attention. The musical is based on Sholem Aleichem’s stories about the lives of the Jewish population in eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century. Not a good time for the Jews who suffered poverty and persecution. To make a musical about this time and these events is likely not the first thing to come to mind but the composers, lyricists, producers and directors who have undertaken this task are portrayed and interviewed particularly those who put together the first production in the 1960’s. The people include the producer Harold Prince, the director and choreographer Jerome Robbins and the composers, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. Happily many of the original people involved are still with us and made for great interviews. I learned a great deal about Jerome Robbins I did not know and I learned a great deal about how a Broadway Show gets put together and staged successfully.

The show has been in continuous production for over 50 years not only on Broadway but in such disparate locations as Korea and Japan. It has been cast with all black cast members, and of course in schools and festivals like Stratford. The documentary shows us that the theme of the film – Tradition – and the suffering and struggles of these Jews are universal themes that speak to all cultures and communities.  It includes film from productions all over the world but what is really cool for Canadians is that they return again and again to a classic production in Stratford.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and recommend it anyone with an interest in film or theatre. You will learn a lot and not be disappointed whether you like musicals or not.

This is a documentary that deals exactly with what the title says. It explores what we mean by democracy now and what it has meant in the past. It looks at how fragile democracy has been and continues to be and draws on Greek philosophy – Plato, Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers – Rousseau and modern political thinkers – Cornell West. The director told us at the start that the film originated four years ago before Trump or Doug Ford or other more recent troubling anti-democratic leaders, but serendipitously it was released at a time when we are all thinking about the state of our democratic institutions and how they are threatened. She also told us up front that she does not have the answers to where we are headed or how to preserve our democracy, but she does want to challenge us to think about what democracy really is and not take it all for granted. The film is not perfect, but I attended with a very politically engaged friend and afterwards we had much to talk about so, despite its flaws, I would say this is a very important film that raises many questions we need to consider as we confront our current situation. I fear I might enter into a long and tedious academic paper here, so I will wind up with a brief description of the thesis of the film. What is shown clearly is that we do not all share the same idea of democracy. Some see it as justice, others as personal freedom, some as socialist or communitarian action. We don’t all agree about who gets to participate, how we should be governed, or what needs to to be done to preserve whatever democracy we decide to implement. Plato argued, and Cornell West agreed, that democracy has within it the seeds of its own downfall. The trick is to see and understand that and find ways to preserve it. How we define it and how we preserve it is up to us, but it is clearly under threat and how we respond in the next short while will be critical to whether or not we continue to see ourselves as living in democracy. The director is writing a companion book that will delve into these themes in more depth and the film will be used by her and her colleagues to continue the conversation over the next several months. On a final note the film was funded primarily by our own National Film Board and that made me proud.

Errol Morris has made some amazing and important documentaries that have focussed on some of the most evil people in American government. Two of my favourites are The Fog of War which is an interview with Robert McNamara and The Known Unknowns, an interview with Donald Rumsfeld. In both these films Morris does not directly confront the subjects about their crimes but rather let the men hang themselves with their own words. He tries the same tactic with Bannon but perhaps to a somewhat less successful outcome. While all these men are very smart and defend their actions with smooth words and eloquence, Bannon is perhaps the most devious and satanic of the three. Some of those who saw the film with me were disappointed that Morris was not more confrontational, but I am not so sure that would have worked and Bannon would likely not have made the film. We do however get great insight to a man who sought to twist the American electorate and successfully steered Trump to victory in 2016. He manages in the film to hide the reality of his far-right agenda while arguing he is for the little guy, the traditional American middle-class worker but I think the film does expose him as the evil that he is. The two earlier films were done as straightforward interviews but his one plays with Bannon’s love of classic war films including Gregory Peck in Twelve O’Clock High and Alec Guinness in The Bridge over the River Kwai. In fact the setting for the interview is a Quonset Hut like the ones in Twelve O’Clock High. We also learn that Bannon is very well educated and quotes Lucifer from Paradise Lost, and Falstaff from Henry V. He does however misinterpret their roles and speeches to justify his own worldview. He is clearly very intelligent and I think believes he has turned the film into a tribute to himself. It is not however and while you do want to jump up and punch him in the face, I think Morris has given us an important portrait of a man who has hurt American badly and who is now trying to do the same to Europe. His impact is not over and maybe this film was made a bit too early to sum up his career as did Morris’s earlier portraits of McNamara and Rumsfeld, but things move more quickly these days and it good to know your enemy. Worth a look this one.