There's a very fine line between obsession and determination. Maria Markina stretches this theme to its limit in her film Harkness, an intimate portrait of idiosyncratic Toronto artist Steve Harkness, the titular musician and lifelong proponent of his own dreams of superstardom. Over the last 20 years, Harkness has been recording his first official full-length album, The Occasion, in his mother's basement. With the release of the album comes a whole new set of challenges, and the film follows Harkness as he continues chasing his big break.
Initially, the film takes an interesting two-handed approach, using talking head interviews with family (including his long-supportive/suffering family), friends, bandmates and publicists to help contextualize and analyze his life, music, tenacity and obsessive dedication. Markina complements these interviews with home movies and photographs that trace his path from a bass-playing jazz fusion prodigy to lifelong dreamer. He's even called an "epic heroic figure" — a handsome, Sean Cassidy-like star well-versed in the art of composition.
We learn of his past, including the darker elements that he tried to escape (including generational trauma and unresolved familial mental health issues), as well as a particularly dire drug experience that resulted in psychosis ("the acid world," as he calls it). This led to years of "mental torture" and pain, suicide ideation, and concern from everyone around him. Music ultimately became his saviour, and he disappeared into the character he'd created, Harkness, in order to escape the darkness, the voices and the self. He wears a purple robe and mirrored visor sunglasses, which obscure his face in favour of an ego-less existence.
The film also captures the daily grind of an unsigned musician who feels destined for bigger and better things. We see the live performances and recording sessions, including a heartbreaking, ill-fated trip to New York, juxtaposed by an affirming one to London. There are also a number of sections where we watch him prepping for live performances and trying unsuccessfully to get people off the streets and into his shows. Markina presents the former as a Rocky-style training montage that feels both demeaning and heroic.
Markina, who wrote, directed and edited the film, does an admirable job telling Harkness's story, but some of the structural and storytelling choices leave much to be desired.
We greet Harkness with a mixture of bewilderment, joy and indifference, sometimes simultaneously. He's sincerely strange and eccentric, and, after all of his setbacks (thanks to his own self-imposed authenticity), we'd expect him to be more bitter. But while he expresses his frustration and anxiety during a few moments in the film, he never shows an ounce of doubt in his abilities or his destiny, and this self-determination is admirable.
Yet he's also an infuriating figure: his lack of motivation for anything other than his own dreams becomes maddening, particularly in scenes where we see his mother working to maintain their house, his clothes and their general lives. The two have some very tender moments, and she clearly wants him to succeed, but she's also realistic. When he makes her a tiramisu for her birthday, she's elated, but she'd also probably love to see him vacuum without being asked.
There is a sense that his ambition comes at the expense of others, and Markina seems to find this endearing. The film contains little criticism and no questions of its subject, which makes the whole thing feel extremely one-note. It lacks commentary and perspective, and thus a central thesis, and this ambiguity doesn't work in the film's favour. Rather, it only makes us consider whether this is an overly long promotional video for Harkness, or a commentary on ambition vs. delusion? There is a lack of clarity — in message, tone, meaning — and it creates a documentary with an identity crisis.
The film comes across like an updated Grey Gardens, which undoubtedly influenced Harkness, while also pursuing the career-revival ambitions of Anvil! The Story of Anvil. In contrast, though, Anvil released 13 albums before the doc came out, and that film was still only 80 minutes long, which leads to the film's biggest flaw: the editing.
At 104 minutes, it's definitely a slog that starts to feel repetitive, particularly in the second act — like an overextended YouTube video whose story doesn't justify its length. For a guy trying to escape the ego, Harkness sure spends a lot of time stroking his own, and the editing does him no favours. Just because someone works long and hard at something doesn't inherently make them worthy of recognition, and Markina's lack of interrogation into his past behaviours or actions doesn't help.
His sadness and frustration after he returns from New York is sincere and real, and these more intimate moments prove essential, painting a more nuanced portrait of Harkness. A few are peppered throughout — Uncle Harkness during a Thanksgiving family dinner, visiting Abbey Road Studios, his desires for a partner and a family, a moment of clarity in Washington Square Park — and these sections show his humanity, some of which we lose during the overextended "dream chasing" sequences. These scenes also help break up the monotony, and while it's perhaps more fun and cinematic to present his eccentricities and ambitions, the film needs a greater depiction of his vulnerability and self-doubt. It takes almost an hour for him to show any insecurity, and the film needs those peaks and valleys to contrast his constant self-aggrandizing.
The New York trip, when nobody comes to see him, also marks the first time that we see Harkness presented with the harsh reality of pursuing musical dreams. Making a living as a musician in a major metropolitan centre is really hard, and not all of these romantics have the privilege or the luxury of living at home while pursuing their unrealized dreams of rock stardom.
The film's most unusual — condescending, even — choice is a repeated trope where Harkness plays live, either in a club or on the streets through a tiny amp, and the audio flips between the live performance itself, and the album version of the song being played. This depiction between reality and what Harkness must be hearing as he performs only serves to be an uninspired, none-too-subtle comment on his mental health, one that borders on patronizing.
On one of his early recordings, Harkness sings, "I never believed in rock 'n' roll… or myself for that matter." Harkness shows that that simply isn't true. There will always be discrepancies between who you are, who you want to be and who you will be.
While Markina clearly wants us to connect with Harkness's relentless pursuit of his dreams, the film's various tones and editorial decisions make our final experience confusing. Are we supposed to root for him? Feel for him? Support, pity and/or judge him?
It's not ambiguous, just vague, and for a film that's attempting to paint a humanistic portrait of this artist, it needs a more direct stance. It falls short in its goal, even though it's unclear what that actually is.