The documentary miniseries The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal is an ideal example of this type of cultural deep dive. Comprehensive and detailed enough to tell die hard fans of one of Canada’s biggest bands things they never knew before and enlightening enough to show the uninitiated or unfamiliar why their work mattered, The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal is a series of equal parts passion and thought. Unafraid of looking into dark corners and periods of the legendary Kingston, Ontario band’s length history from the early 80s to their tragically forced dissolution in 2017, chronicler/director/archivist/collaborator Mike Downie’s four part series is comprehensive and engaging, a perfect send-off to such a beloved act.
Band members Gord Downie, Rob Baker, Johnny Fay, Paul Langlois, and Gord Sinclair lived in the same area growing up, but really came together like most bands ultimately end up forming: from tinkering around in other bands first and experimenting with different line-ups. Once the core of the group was set, The Tragically Hip – as they eventually came to be known – toured Canada relentlessly, and made the country their home base even after landing a major label recording deal. Referred to by many fans and journalists alike as the most quintessentially Canadian band of all time, The Hip’s road to sustained relevancy and success wasn’t a smooth one, with personal tragedies, infighting, and artistic frustrations often threatening to send the juggernaut train off the tracks several times, but no matter how bittersweet and sad their eventual end would be, there’s an undeniable power in revelling in the story of a band who rose to great heights and got to dictate how they ultimately went out, when so many other acts in similar positions never have that luxury.
Director Downie (brother of Gord and helmer of several of the band’s music videos) has crafted a work of both deep love and scholarship. Although so much of The Hip’s cultural identity was formed by its boundlessly charismatic and energetic frontman – who was able to blend emotionally charged lyrics with exceptional storytelling chops rooted in Canadian history and literature – Downie is able to go beyond the obvious familial connections and iconography to look at the band’s career in totality and fine detail. The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal includes plenty of nifty anecdotes (the backstory of the saxophone player they had in their early years, the origin of the loon call that opens “Wheat Kings”), but balances that with a keen sense of the bigger picture and relationships that shaped the band’s success and enduring legacy. With the exception of some unnecessary moments with The Trailer Park boys acting in character, every interview subject in The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal provides a thoughtful, poignant, intelligent, or insightful piece of the band’s story.
The fairly recent sting of losing Gord Downie to terminal brain cancer looms large over the documentary, but the band’s other set backs and difficulties over the years are portrayed as being on similar levels and equally traumatic. A section that looks at the way Gord struggled with The Hip’s sometimes aggro male fan base during the 90s is particularly poignant and insightful. The rift that developed between Gord and the rest of the band continued to widen to a point that it becomes amazing that the band didn’t dissolve several times over. The band’s inability to translate their Canadian successes across the border into the US always dogged them, to a point where the surviving band members and many admirers still wish those talking points would die in a fire. Even the way The Hip chose to go out with a farewell tour comes across like a tense, fraught, and in some ways relieving coda for some members of the band. It would be easy for any music doc to simply look at the rigours of touring – missed births, creative exhaustion, addictions – but while Downie acknowledges all those things, he’s careful to make sure these discussions are all framed in a respectful and empathetic manner.
To some degree, all creative endeavours thrive on some tension, and Downie shows that The Tragically Hip were no exception to the rule, even though a lot of their setbacks and shortcomings were placed under a larger cultural microscope as one of Canada’s most successful musical acts. The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal has a typically Canadian humility to the project, depicting the band as just another result of hard work and perseverance en route to success and an enduring legacy. But it also shows what made The Hip a band without precedent, and not just as a Canadian act. Gord Downie would likely approve of his brother’s work in making The Hip’s legacy flow like a great work of literature, and everyone else will appreciate the remarkable amount of thought and balance.
The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal is now available to stream on Prime Video. It screened as part of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People’s Choice Documentary Award.
