Final Rating: 2.5/5
By the time I learned about the band Broken Social Scene back when I was in high school, they were already legends. It wasn’t just because they were one of the biggest and brightest indie rock bands of an era, nor was it because I grew up in Toronto, the birthplace of the band. It had to do with the fact that I went to the same high school as founding member Kevin Drew and fellow iconic members Emily Haines and Amy Millian. Now I didn’t go to Etobicoke School of the Arts at the same time, as they are all over a decade older than me. But by the time I arrived in 2004, the band had already released two albums and their big breakthrough album came out while I was in the 10th grade. At some point in grade 12 (in 2006 or 2007) Drew along with Leslie Feist (known professionally just as Feist) gave a speech to our school along the lines of following your dreams and 17 year old me even met Drew afterwards (with my friend Ryan Haas awkwardly asking to stroke his beard, which Drew was game for).
It’s All Gonna Break, directed by Stephen Chung, gives fans of Broken Social Scene an inside look like never imagined. Chung, who became friends with co-founding BSS member Brendan Canning while he was jumping around between different bands (including Len of Steal My Sunshine fame), was present when Kevin Drew became acquainted with Canning. Chung, an early adopter to home digital video cameras, filmed nonstop and being friends with people who went on to very successful musical careers paid dividends as the moments he was capturing were actually historically significant.
Sometime in 2008, Stephen Chung originally edited together footage he had recorded of the band playing, recording and in their daily lives into a documentary after filming them for around a decade. The band decided that they didn’t want a film about them released at the time, mostly due to the fact that they didn’t feel that there was a story that was interesting enough in the film. Chung shelved the idea for over a decade more before resurrecting the idea by incorporating new interviews with the old edited footage he shot.
The movie is a treasure trove of iconic Canadian rock moments, showcasing not just a band on the upswing, but capturing a moment in time of the early 2000’s Toronto music scene (one that is near and dear to my heart). We see how Kevin Drew and Charles Spearin in their first musical project KC Accidental, lead to an introduction to Brendan Canning, a seasoned industry veteran and thus began something special.
We also see how the band’s community spirit lead to Drew’s Afton Avenue house in Toronto’s Queen West area became a hub for musicians to jam at, which lead to the concept of a ever growing collective that would become the rotating lineup of BSS (seriously, the Wikipedia page on official band members rings in at 22 names).
After meeting producer Dave Newfeld, they got to work on recording their second album, and the first featuring more than just Drew and Canning. Newfeld harnessed the group’s chaotic energy, streamlining the large number of musicians into something special and unique. 2002’s You Forgot It In People was an underground hit with newly minted tastemakers Pitchfork giving the album a 9.2/10 rating, propelling them to indie icons, which allowed them to tour the world and for the band to finally make money from music.
In the immediate years following the success of You Forgot It In People, other members started to experience success as well. Emily Haines and James Shaw founded Metric, Amy Millian and Evan Cranley had success with Stars and both Jason Collett and Feist had solo careers. As the band grew bigger that meant juggling other people’s availability with the ever growing demands placed upon them.
Not long after the release of the band’s third album 2005’s self titled release, Chung stepped back from filming the band full time to focus on his own career as a cinematographer and to raise his family. The archival footage ends at this time and doesn’t pick up until the inclusion of the present day interviews, with Drew, Canning, Haines, Feist, Shaw and others watching the footage back and commenting on the importance of what was captured.
For what makes this film so excellent, it’s unfiltered behind the scenes look, is also unfortunately the film’s downfall. Chung has some truly spectacular moments beautifully rendered in low-res DV glory, featuring plenty of lens flares and fly on the wall energy. This includes filming Drew as he was talking with Jeffrey Remedios on the phone discussing the idea of creating a record label to distribute the band’s albums.
It also means that whatever Chung didn’t personally record, barely factors into the band’s story. We get a brief moment from Emily Haines where she tells a story about her and James Shaw deciding to move to New York to pursue their own musical ambitions. That is about the only acknowledgment of the existence of Metric or any other musical project a fellow band member created (no mention of how Feist had the most success of any member with her solo career). It is mentioned how Drew lived with and dated fellow member Jo-ann Goldsmith on Afton, but the film doesn’t mention that they were married and eventually divorced as well, with context to everyone’s relationships absent throughout the film.
The documentary starts out as how a close friend of the band was present for all these key moments into the final act being instead about how that close friend, Stephen Chung, needed to grow up and find his own way. This changes the perspective of the first hour and a bit of the film, into something else entirely. While Chung certainly has a unique story, it isn’t presented in the film until near the end and thus comes out of nowhere.
This film paints itself into an awkward corner of who it is for. The who’s who of names featured will be appealing to the hardcore fans of the band as we see the magic of how they wrote early songs and performed at venues such as The Horseshoe Tavern, Lee’s Palace and The Rivoli and culminated with a massive two night stand at The Pheonix (which seemed the be the original centrepiece of the 2008 version of the film). It doesn’t quite go deep enough. Near the end of the film it is alluded to a few times that the band has broken up several times, with no explanation as to why these fights happened or what resolved them.
For people who may be less familiar with the band, it certainly is a fascinating insight into an era and scene, but with so many names and faces, it might be hard to keep track of everything. This isn’t helped that despite mostly covering the band in chronological order, many important milestones are excluded. There is no mention of the bands yearly Toronto Island festival they would host, endearing them to locals, which eventually lead into the Field Trip festivals.
Thank you to MPRM Communications for the screener.
