KCFF screens two sold-out showings of ‘Nirvanna: The Band- the Show- the Movie’

I laughed. I cried. I felt compelled to try the CN Tower’s EdgeWalk.

Of course, I’m describing the surreal experience that’s viewing Nirvanna: The Band- the Show- the Movie as part of the Kingston Canadian Film Festival (KCFF) on Feb. 27. The Screening Room was packed with audience members of all ages, one of the film’s two sold-out showings bolstered by Nirvanna’s word-of-mouth success since its Canadian wide release on Feb. 13.

Let’s rewind a bit, if you know, you know, to set up the film, directed by Matt Johnson and starring him and Jay McCarrol as themselves. Nirvanna (the movie) is based on Nirvanna the Band the Show, a mockumentary web series (turned television series). The show also stars Johnson and McCarrol as two bumbling musicians attempting to achieve their lifelong dream of playing a show at The Rivoli venue in Toronto.

In Nirvanna (the movie), Johnson and McCarrol pick up where the series left off: only this time, the duo are well into middle-age. Confronted with a lifetime of failed attempts to secure a Rivoli gig, they embark on a madcap adventure that serves as a love letter to their years of friendship, musical collaboration, and the playful spirit of Canadian artistry.

The film’s guerilla-style shots pack the tight one hour, 39-minute runtime with dozens of “How did they do that?” moments. Johnson and McCarrol are virtually the only two actors in the film, springing improvised dialogue on unsuspecting passerby to hilarious effect.

“Every time it goes right is onscreen,” Director of Photography Jared Raab said in a Q&A session after the screening. According to him, Johnson and McCarrol didn’t have any lines of dialogue written down, only a “10-page outline of the plot that changed drastically during shooting.”

The results are comedic gold that would take entire writers’ rooms several seasons to mine. One of my favourite scenes was an early interaction between Johnson, McCarrol, and a Canadian Tire employee they’re haggling over whether a pair of pliers will be able to sever the EdgeWalk harnesses so they can parachute off the CN Tower. The real-life worker confesses he’s a libertarian but expresses genuine concern for their well-being in a scene that had half the audience in tears.

But if Nirvanna seems to fly by the seat of its pants, leaping from moment to whimsical moment, that results from years of meticulous work on behalf of a small team of filmmakers, five or six people each day by Raab’s estimate. He also said the movie spent two years in production, abnormally long for a feature film.

In terms of visual effects (VFX), Nirvanna uses them sparingly. Raab said his team was advised to “treat it like there’s no VFX in this movie,” using effects afterward to recreate only the most fantastical shots.

Modern filmmaking “thrives on narrow parameters,” Raab said, so including as many unedited shots as possible leaves audiences with the impression everything they saw was, in fact, real. This extends to scenes which (spoiler!) supposedly take place in 2008.

Nirvanna uses outtakes from the original show to craft time-travel sequences where Johnson and McCarrol’s younger selves are present. According to Raab, only one shot included VFX, while the rest were completed practically with doubles, swish pans, and clever cinematography.

Production Designer Kerry Noonan shared at the Q&A session that when re-creating Johnson and McCarrol’s 2008 apartment, crew members used secondhand sites like Kijiji to replace items like vacuums in the original shots. The final scenes are some of the film’s most impressive, accomplishing convincing time travel better than any Marvel movie I’ve seen.

Without spoilers, several elements of the film borrow from other famous movies, adding to how astounding it is that Nirvanna was ever greenlit in the first place (during one scene, Johnson breaks the fourth wall to tell the audience something to this effect).

“We often say some of the most important members of the film are the lawyers,” Raab said. Nirvanna’s team brought lawyers into the writing room early on to advise what would or wouldn’t be allowed through Canada’s fair use and copyright laws, permitting the film’s cheeky tributes.

Much of the movie feels this way: skirting the edges of what’s permissible, a form of organized chaos that manifests as freewheeling creative joy. “If the movie has any heart at all, it’s because we genuinely feel that way about the people we’re working with,” Raab said.

The product is a film that’s impossible not to root for, cementing Canada’s place in the cultural zeitgeist at a time when it’s needed most.