Mark Reviews Movies: GORDON LIGHTFOOT: IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 28, 2020

The story of Gordon Lightfoot's success feels like a bit of an outlier in the typical tradition of musicians making it big. He had supportive parents, including a mother who taught him music from a young age. When he wanted to go to college in Hollywood for a musical education, he applied, was accepted, and went, which is the actual entirety of singer's description of that chapter of his life in Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind. Lightfoot worked small gigs and gradually rose in prominence, becoming one of Canada's most celebrated musicians.

These details are connected by a lack of challenge. That's not meant to be a slight against Lightfoot, who obviously did work hard to get where he was at the height of his career and where he is now. The man actually wrote his songs in longhand—on sheet music and in pen, with the lyrics set to a melody below the guitar chords. His guitar collection is kept with instruments in various tunes and "watered" every night. The man lives and breathes music, and for his diligence, he has been rewarded.

In Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni's documentary, though, the rewards are the things that matter. Everything else—from Lightfoot's relationship issues, to his alcohol abuse, to any kind of personal or professional doubt or struggle he may have had—is barely a footnote. Driving down the streets of Toronto, he notices an apartment building, where, he points out, he lived after leaving his wife and two children. That's the extent and end of that story. As for the period when he drank too much, he just decided to quit and did. That's the end of that, too.

There's obviously more to all of this and more, and either Lightfoot himself or the filmmakers would rather ignore it. If they examined any of this any deeper, after all, there wouldn't be time for the two montages showing how many artists have covered the man's songs. If the directors probed their subject any further, there wouldn't be time for the abundance of interviews with talking heads, who mainly speak in often general praise of Lightfoot. Near the end of Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind, someone suggests a life filled with trouble and burden, and that might have been a story worth telling.

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