Hot Docs

Love Shines (Director: Doug Arrowsmith): Love Shines is a first-rate, in-depth por­trait of acclaimed Toronto singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith. Director Arrowsmith, a hard­core Sexsmith devotee, avoids turning his film into a fanboy gush­fest; instead, he unabashedly presents the singer with all of his flaws nakedly on dis­play. Sexsmith is a pain­fully insecure and intro­verted indi­vidual – your classic “tor­tured artist”, as it were – and it’s sur­prising how much access into his life he gives Arrowsmith, in whom he clearly put a great deal of trust. Shot over the course of seven years, the doc­u­mentary was ori­gin­ally con­ceived to stop filming after Sexsmith’s then career high of head­lining at Toronto’s famed Massey Hall, back in 2006. Instead, Arrowsmith kept shooting, which presented the oppor­tunity to chron­icle the recording of Sexsmith’s twelfth album, Long Player Late Bloomer. Those recording ses­sions, which provide some intriguing insight into Sexsmith’s cre­ative pro­cess, are the centrepiece of Love Shines, and the film is sig­ni­fic­antly better because of it.

Sexsmith, for those unfa­miliar with his career (and I counted myself in that group before watching the doc­u­mentary), has been a per­en­nial critics’ favourite since his debut solo album came out in 1995 (he released an album four years prior as a member of Toronto indie band The Uncool). Peers such as Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, Leslie Feist, and Daniel Lanois have been singing his praises for years and do so throughout the film. In fact, Costello, one of Sexsmith’s biggest cham­pions, equates his skill for cre­ating melodies to that of Paul McCartney. Despite the accol­ades, Sexsmith still sells a paltry number of albums, which is a con­stant source of angst for him. The ongoing struggle with main­taining artistic integ­rity while seeking main­stream suc­cess informs much of the nar­rative in Love Shines, leading to the enlist­ment of mega-producer Bob Rock to oversee the recording of Long Player Late Bloomer. Rock is primarily known as a hard rock/metal pro­ducer, based on his earlier work on a number of hugely suc­cessful albums from the likes of Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, and The Cult. Most not­ably, he was Metallica’s exclusive pro­ducer for 12 years and is more than used to working with an artist and having their every move filmed, as was the case for the fant­astic doc on the band, Some Kind Of Monster. In recent years, he’s diver­si­fied his scope to include acts such as Nina Gordon, The Tragically Hip, and Michael Bublé. Sexsmith hopes the pairing will raise his pro­file via the pure name recog­ni­tion that the pro­ducer brings, as well as increase album sales by way of the more com­mer­cially pal­at­able and highly pol­ished sound that Rock gets from the artists he works with. A stellar group of vet­eran musi­cians is brought on board to play on the album, including drummer Josh Freese (Nine Inch Nails, A Perfect Circle), gui­tarist Rusty Anderson (Paul McCartney), bassist Paul Bushnell (Elton John, Sugarland), and key­boardist Jamie Edwards (Aimee Mann).

Periodic and intro­spective glimpses back into Sexsmith’s upbringing reveal a shy young­ster who struggled with his con­fid­ence and endured abuse from bul­lies while growing up in St. Catharines, Ontario, even­tu­ally becoming a father at age 19 after get­ting his girl­friend preg­nant at the same moment he lost his vir­ginity. Certain mile­stones from Sexsmith’s career are shown, including a home movie scene where we see his par­ents, watching the 2002 Juno Awards on their home tele­vi­sion, become ecstatic over his win for Songwriter of the Year. In it, his mother is seen excitedly taking pic­tures of the TV screen as her son wins the award, appar­ently unclear of how a VCR works. It’s one of the fun­niest (and sweetest) moments in the film. “Funny” is not exactly a word anyone would asso­ciate with Sexsmith him­self. In his inter­views with Arrowsmith, he comes across as a fra­gile, depressed, and lacking con­fid­ence, which reminded me of a line from Bruce Springsteen’s “Better Days”: “It’s a sad man, my friend, who’s livin’ in his own skin and can’t stand the com­pany.” Most of the theatre audi­ence stuck around for the post-screening Q&A ses­sion with Sexsmith and Arrowsmith, and I must say I felt down­right hor­rible that I had to leave about halfway through to catch my last Hot Docs screening uptown. As I con­spicu­ously des­cended the stairs and walked across the front of the theatre, past the singer to the exit, I couldn’t help but worry that Sexsmith was tap­ping into his ever-present insec­ur­ities and won­dering why someone wasn’t inter­ested in hearing what he had to say. Does that make me nar­ciss­istic or empathetic?

Early indic­a­tions (it came out in March) indicate that Long Player Late Bloomer won’t propel Sexsmith to sig­ni­fic­antly new heights of com­mer­cial suc­cess. The album actu­ally turned out to be a hard sell to pro­spective music labels, with some iron­ic­ally rejecting it as being too main­stream. Still, it should improve on the sales num­bers from his last sev­eral albums and this film (which is now airing on HBO Canada) should help him find a new audi­ence. Whether it’s the excel­lent music, fin­an­cial struggles that one wouldn’t expect a “name” musi­cian to face, the strange dicho­tomy of a guy who hates the spot­light but per­forms in it for a living, or just the fact that Sexsmith makes for a great underdog story, non-fans will find plenty in Love Shines to hold their interest.

Tagged as: #hotdocs11, canada, music

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