Before the screening of Bruce Springsteen's Tour Diary documentary, a TIFF programmer came out to introduce the film and made an off-hand comment about the musician's "three-hour shows." A few seats down from me, I overheard someone quietly whisper a correction: "Four." That is, in my opinion, simply too long for a concert! But, regardless, it's clear that Springsteen fans hold his legendary live shows as a point of pride.
That near-religious reverence is the only reason to explain why Tour Diary needs to exist, since it's unusually superficial, even by the low standards of puff piece celebrity docs. Much of the film is devoted to explaining what exactly a concert is and how it works.
The incredibly tedious opening chunk involves the E Street Band reconvening to rehearse for their first tour in six years, with practically every member of the very large band given their own talking head interview to say some variation of, "It's been a long time since we played together, so we were a little rusty at first." They speak at length about how the tempos were initially too slow, and there's some in-depth praise of how Springsteen carefully selected the setlist. If you wanted to hear more about that setlist, don't fear, because they will discuss that several more times throughout the 99-minute runtime.
Perhaps Road Diary might have worked better as a concert film, since it's unclear what director Thom Zimny and Springsteen are trying to say here. There's no thesis to speak of, just some fairly mundane observations about concert logistics strung together with live clips and some archival footage from the band's early days. Interviews with fans offer similarly boilerplate observations about how artists bring people together.
Elsewhere, Zimny offers weirdly specific answers for questions I never had, like whether Springsteen is present for all of the band's rehearsals, or how many guitars they bring in their road cases.
The film finally scratches deeper when Springsteen discusses mortality. He's 74 — old enough that some of his bandmates have died, including longtime E Streeters Clarence Clemens and Danny Federici, as well as all of the members of Springsteen's pre-fame band the Castiles. His wife Patti Scialfa has been battling cancer and has had to scale back her performing responsibilities. Perhaps, if the film had focused more on the "why" and less on the "how," it wouldn't have felt so much like talking shop with a tour manager.
The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5–15. Get information about tickets and screening at TIFF's website.