When George Ding (editor of this site) read my entry on Catfish (#12), he said that at the end he didn’t know whether I actually liked the movie or not. That’s fine, because I’m not really writing reviews here. The film scholar David Bordwell argues that suspending critical judgment of a film is often necessary to ask the really interesting questions. Even if a film seems egregiously bad, I think it’s more interesting to poke at the breaks and problem points to figure out what’s going on, rather than slam the whole thing into the dustbin.

On the other side of the equation, I also understand that some people don’t want to think analytically about film or television. Sometimes I’m that way about music. A track, an album, a band — to me it either works or it doesn’t. It evokes something on the level of impulse and emotion, a quality that binds like sense memory; if it doesn’t, I shut it down. I’ve tried writing music criticism before, and it just feels utterly foreign and alien, and not just because I’m ill-equipped for it but because it doesn’t seem like something I should be doing to music. I am horrible at remembering lyrics; half the time I’m not even hearing them. While an analytical framework deepens my appreciation for film and television, with music it feels like it pushes me away.

So what’s to be done when the two collide? I love the band Broken Social Scene, those magnificent bastards, the Canadian indie-rock equivalent of the Wu-Tang Clan. (That’s what it sounds like when I try to write about music.) The musical social networking site last.fm tells me that balancing my tastes for age and gender (whatever that means), Broken Social Scene is at the center of my musical universe — so naturally I was drawn to This Movie is Broken, directed by Bruce McDonald. It’s a concert film that captures a BSS gig in Toronto on July 11, 2009. But the film also has a screenplay written by McDonald along with Don McKellar and Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew; there’s a fictional story that interweaves with the concert. It’s trying something different, something not entirely successful — but as Bordwell suggests, I’m going to suspend critical judgment to ask some interesting questions.

After the initial credits performance introducing the twenty-member lineup of the band, we open on Bruno (Greg Calderone) as he wakes up from having consummated his longtime crush on Caroline (Georgina Reilly), whose name recurs in his running internal monologue, and never without reverence. However, it seems like Bruno and Caroline are going to be a one-night stand, as she’s leaving Toronto — the film chronicles their last day as they head to the BSS concert and figure things out between them.

This fictional story finds its purchase against the backdrop of reality, with the authenticity of the real BSS concert and the real 2009 Toronto garbage strike framing and containing this love story. The melange of fact and fiction can produce challenging results, as when Steven Soderbergh tried it with his HBO political series K Street. There’s an urgency that a fictional story has when placed against a real backdrop, but it’s something that exists outside the narrative and filters through in ways that might only be noticeable if you know the facts. This urgency comes from discarding the continuous process of refinement and reshooting that most fiction film uses; when you rely on a real event to give your story meaning, there’s a very narrow window — perhaps only one shot — to get it right.

Gimme Shelter (#49) is still on my mind, and there are parallels: both films revolve around a free concert and draw on the energy in the space between audience and performer. The stage issues commands to the people, but the BSS audience of ’09 is certainly more well-behaved than the Stones audience of ’69. Where the Maysles doc was lensed from the perspective of the performers looking out, This Movie is Broken is more in the traditional concert film mold, gazing upon the band in an idealized way: even in the intimate close-up, we’re still on the outside looking in on the band. While the footage of Bruno and Caroline has a soft and shaky quality from its handheld energy, the footage of the band is rock-solid and razor-sharp in high definition. It’s a celebration rather than an investigation.

The love story interacts in a strange way with the concert. There’s no narrative in the concert set list, but by juxtaposition the two segments give each other a strengthened arc — and the fiction desperately needs it, because the hassle of trying to find and use the restroom may be truthful to the concert experience, but those scenes in the film are actively searching for their purpose. Compare this film to Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs, which is notorious for its explicit sex scenes but also draws on the power of music to give structure and meaning to the fractured and chaotic experience of a romantic relationship, and uses real concert performances as signposts of that experience. It even features inner monologues from the male lead, but while in 9 Songs they come across as reflective, here Bruno has a manic, self-destructive narcissism.

(I’m reminded of a critic who revisited the Richard Linklater film Before Sunrise when its sequel came out. What she found charming in Ethan Hawke’s character when she was younger had become insufferable years later. On the other hand, his wiser, wearier incarnation in Before Sunset was far more endearing to her.)

The love story, considered in the abstract, should work; it trades on the themes of longing and hope, of despair and desire, that underpin BSS. But because This Movie is Broken is a concert film with fictional moments rather than a fiction film with concert moments, the story seems perpetually searching for its footing. Compare the priorities in 9 Songs to This Movie is Broken by the camera blocking: in the former we see the performances mostly from the perspective of the audience, often distant and isolated. In the latter we’re closer and more intimate with the band, getting angles that only a concert video could show you — and certainly they’re more in focus.

Yet because the film is so ruled by its musical backdrop, if you’re a fan it sometimes gets away with moments it shouldn’t — the moments speak with the power of the music, as when Bruno and a friend bike down a deserted street, drunkenly mumbling the words to “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl.” And the ending might be pro forma, but it doesn’t matter when it’s backed by “Lover’s Spit,” perhaps the most romantic song concerning oral sex ever written.

(The Film School Thesis Statement Generator says: “This Movie is Broken masks the major pillars of post-feminism through its use of implied depth-of-field.” Depth-of-field is crucial in this movie, and the connection with post-feminism? The header image sums it up)

(Also, there’s a kind of unreal quality in seeing the “real” concert footage on YouTube.)