Gordon Downie

(On Cable TV, June 2021) Dear Canada: I’m sorry I have failed you by not seeing One Week in the thirteen years since it was released. It’s not only a good movie, it’s a great Canadian movie and I really should have made an effort to see it earlier. But seriously: There are simply too many movies to see all of them promptly, and a few usually escape while we’re too busy watching other things. One Week is one of those, and its non-Hollywood nature isn’t an excuse when the film is a CanCon favourite that is broadcast multiple times a year on Canadian Cable TV channels. The story, in a few words, has a young man (Josuah Jackson, quite good) making a road trip from Toronto to the Pacific Ocean upon learning that he has terminal cancer. His fiancée and family can’t understand, but we can: it’s his last chance for an adventure before chemotherapy kicks in, especially given his rambling conviction that he hasn’t lived much of a life until then. This sets up a terrific road trip film, as he encounters various people along the way and lets them change him even as he has an impact on their lives. The story literally moves all the way west, taking in the landscapes of Canada west-of-Toronto as he rides his motorcycle across half the country in a credible approximation of the Great Canadian Journey. Writer/Director Michael McGowan is clearly aiming high here, featuring cameos by Canadian musicians (including a gobsmacking one by The Tragically Hip’s Gordon Downie as a cancer survivor, given that Downie famously died of cancer in 2017), and touches of magical realism that could only exist in Canada. No, the film is not overtly supernatural, but getting guidance from a Tim Horton Roll-up-the-Rim and stumbling into a small-town arena featuring the Stanley Cup is about as close as it gets. (Alas, the Bakenaked Ladies’ titular song doesn’t make an appearance, probably because its upbeat chords don’t fit the film.)  The addition of an all-knowing narrator adding context and narrative tangent does add a lot to the gravitas and the humour of the film, although this narration leads straight to my biggest problem with the film: A last-scene revelation that the narration is from the protagonist’s book, which sabotages its omniscience and creates vexing questions about what the narrator did not know. Still, I liked One Week quite a bit: It’s not perfect in its details and runs a bit roughshod over a few supporting characters, but it has some real heft and a great sense of Canadiana. I’ve been mulling about an Ottawa-to-Victoria road trip for a while, and One Week confirmed that I shouldn’t wait too long.