Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind

Gordon Lightfoot may seem like something of a footnote to 1970s folk-pop music in the U.S., but this endearingly Canadian documentary reminds us that he’s the near equivalent of Bob Dylan up yonder. The adoring filmmakers — Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni — have done extensive interviews with Lightfoot himself, now in his 80s, and with a who’s who of Canadian pop-rock: Anne Murray, two members of Rush, Sarah McLachlan, two members of The Guess Who and many others who will be better known to viewers north of the border.

Lightfoot has indeed written many timeless classics, including “Beautiful,” holiday album staple “Song for a Winter Night” and “Early Morning Rain.” And that’s in addition to the enduring hits he charted himself, most prominently “Sundown” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

But the documentary is quaintly skewed in Lightfoot’s favor, so that his infidelities, flashes of anger and rampant alcoholism are softened in the retelling. Kehoe and Tosoni wisely focus on the person and the music rather than the career, so the typical rock bio touchstones of hovering album covers and chart positions are mostly absent. Instead, If You Could Read My Mind is shaped by Lightfoot’s personal journey, and the songs’ backstories emerge naturally from that narrative. You will never hear “Sundown” the same again, for example.

The movie is too quick-paced to give us a sustained, now-I-get-it sample of his peak showmanship, but it’s satisfying to see an aging pop-music master who still seems sort of giddy and pleased to perform. In an Asheville concert a few years ago, when he launched into “If You Could Read My Mind,” the years fell away and his promise and passion shined through. The movie provides a similar nostalgic warmth. Nothing wrong with that.

Available July 29 via grailmoviehouse.com