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You can bet Jack White doesn’t like music blogs. It wouldn’t be surprising if the proudly retro guitarist-vocalist of The White Stripes doesn’t dig on YouTube either. So it would probably please him to no end that when he and partner Meg White played a series of off-the-cuff public shows in Canada (a bowling alley is Saskatoon, a YMCA in Toronto, a city bus in Winnipeg) during the band’s 2007 tour, this sort of obvious blog fodder flew under the radar of all but the most obsessive web citizens.

It’s that sort mystery in the age of full digital disclosure that first draws one in to The White Stripes tour documentary, Under Great White Northern Lights, which made it’s Los Angeles premier at Hollywood’s 1920s film palace, The Egyptian Theater, on Tuesday night. A visual diary of the White Stripes on the road in the most far-flung reaches of the Canadian north, film-maker Emmett Malloy brilliantly captures these rural outposts and the people who call them home, all while managing to stay focused on the visiting duo who one suspects are more comfortable in these environs than the modern world down below.

Of course, the simple stereotype of Northern Canadians as backwoods troglodytes is both unfair and unwarranted. But it’s hard to watch Jack and Meg interact with a group of Inuit tribal elders without considering the thousands of years of human history that came before the web’s instant gratification became the status quo. Such contemplation turns out to be the perfect context for The White Stripes tribal blues music as well as their sharp ‘50s inspired garb. Imagine if Mad Men followed a couple of kids from Detroit playing old juke joints instead of urbane ad men and you’ll get the ambience I’m talking about.

The timing of Under Great White Northern Lights couldn’t be better, coming at a point when cancelled tours and growing side projects leaves the status of the White Stripes in questions. But consequential events aside, the film morphs from tour diary into a celebration of the Stripes 10 year anniversary show which is captured at the end of the film. And in a closing scene too emotional to discuss here, one is left to wonder if this multi-layered celluloid document is a concert flick, an on-the-road tale, or a last testament from one of the most important rock bands of the Millennium. Here’s hoping it’s only the first two.

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