PEARL JAM TWENTY Plays TIFF 2011

It’s difficult for me to write about the PEARL JAM TWENTY documentary. Around 1992, when I started discovering the sort of music that would shape my tastes for years to come, Pearl Jam was hitting it big. The “Ten” album had been out for several months, the video for “Jeremy” was in heavy rotation (back when there still was rotation), and it seemed like every fourth person I met had the words “Pearl Jam” scrawled on a binder, backpack, or jacket.

In other words, I have grown up with the music of these five men from Seattle. I am very close to their music. As evidenced by the narration withing PEARL JAM TWENTY, Cameron Crowe is likewise close to the men and their music (even more so thanks to personal relationships that go back for years). I can’t help but wonder if Crowe had the same difficulty creating the film as I’m having writing about it.

The doc, which had its TIFF debut to a raucous crowd at The Princess of Wales Theatre, chronicles the band from before the beginning. Beginning in the days when Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard were playing with Mother Love Bone, it details how Eddie Vedder came into the fold and how the band recorded and launched what would become one of the most unexpectedly successful albums of the decade. From there the documentary chronicles the bands struggles with fame, their fights with many rock institutions, and how by the time 2000 rolled around they almost faded from view.

Where the film struggles is in defining its audience. If it’s a film for the fans, it doesn’t tell them much they don’t already know – nor does it pay a whole lot of attention to the second decade of the band’s life. If it’s a film that wants to play to a broader base, it lacks any counterweight of the band surviving their own internal struggles, and playing the political games needed to stay on the radar. Neither flaw makes the doc bad by any stretch, but it leaves gaps on both sides of the fence.

I’m curious about the shape Cameron Crowe wanted to give the doc. Did he want to write a fan letter to a band whose music he loves? Did he want to chronicle twenty years in the life of his friends? (You might recall that Crowe and the band go way back to the days of SINGLES) Or was he looking to create the definitive story of two decades in what was once the biggest band in the world?

Warts and all, the screening was a blast for me as a fan of the band. Listening to the songs I know note-by-note ring out larger than life gave me something different than the concert experience. As was to be expected, the theatre was filled to the rafters with fans of the band, so the mood in the room was truly boisterous. It all combined to create something that sits in its own special spot – bigger than a record, but smaller than a concert.

Cameron Crowe might not have written the definitive piece on Pearl Jam, but the piece he did write will be damned hard to top.

PEARL JAM TWENTY plays TIFF once more: 12pm today at Ryerson Theatre. It will then play select North American theatres for one night only on September 23rd.