Music

HOT DOCS REVIEW: Ron Sexsmith: Love Shines

by Nicole Villeneuve

There’s a scene in Love Shines in which legendary American musician Steve Earle says, bluntly, that maybe Ron Sexsmith underestimates how lucky he is that anyone even knows who he is. “It’s unjust, but it’s not unprecedented.” It’s one of many interviews with various supporters singing praise to Sexsmith’s genius, and it’s the central idea that Love Shines is built around—if Sexsmith and his songwriting are so lauded, often by other well-respected artists such as Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney, why haven’t his out-of-time pop songs achieved sustainable commercial success?

When Sexsmith entered the studio to record his new album, Long Player Late Bloomer, he decided to change course a bit in order to “try to break through in some way.” He called on reknowned radio rock producer Bob Rock, a figure who, throughout the movie, comes to be a source of confidence for the perpetually self-doubting, shy Sexsmith, not only loading his subtle pop songs with huge drums and guitar overdubs, but questioning his motives, and affirming his integrity. Director Douglas Arrowsmith creates an entertaining snapshot of the album production process; the footage also helps establish positivity and forward momentum in the film, which is otherwise pretty depressing.

The rest of the film cuts back through time into Sexsmith’s modest St. Catharines, ON childhood, his own teenaged fatherhood, in and out of highs and lows in his career, and, of course, the recording of Long Player Late Bloomer. The most emotionally poignant moment comes not from Sexsmith’s apologetic self-loathing, nor his current wife Colleen Hixenbaugh’s empathetic tears, but in a moment in 2002, watching Sexsmith’s parents watch him win a Songwriter of the Year Juno. Watching from home, she’s taking pictures of the TV, ecstatic. It’s a simple moment but a powerful one, a parents’ unflinching dedication resonating deep.

Almost as if out of a scene in Charlie Brown’s life, when the new album—the one Sexsmith is putting his all, including funding, into—is finished, it’s rejected by Warner Music in the U.S., and by a suggested indie label for being too mainstream. It’s is shopped for months before receiving distribution from various small labels around the world (the album does get released by Warner in Canada). One wonders how dark that period might have been. If that didn’t break him, at what you’ve got to thing is his most vulnerable, maybe nothing ever really will.

It seems a strange thing to make a film about—a well-established artist seeking more, though not sure of what, and distraught over the fact that he doesn’t have it. It’s both brave in its honesty and sad in its reality. In the film, Sexsmith says he never did it for the money, and it’s clear he’s got the adoration (something singer/songwriter Feist says has worn off for him), but if Sexsmith is being honest, you’re left to wonder what exactly it is that he’s seeking. In a Q&A after the film, Sexsmith clarifies that to him, success is being able to afford to bring his whole band out on tour, not gold-plated toiled kinds of riches. When asked if it was difficult to watch after the fact, Sexsmith admits that it was a downer, but that seeing himself in that light was hard for more vain reasons. “I felt like I was watching Where the Wild Things Are,” he quipped.

Towards the end of Love Shines, Sexsmith admits that he doesn’t feel meant for much in this life, but he does feel meant for songwriting and performing. In a telling admission, a bit tragically, he says he often feels like a better person in song than in real life. It’s self-reflective and sad, which, overall, sums up much of Love Shines, and the rest of it does well as a look into a creative mind and process within a business as ruthless as music, which is something for more than just Ron Sexsmith fans.