Just perfect...

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

I knew that this film was listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, as a documentary of sorts I didn't know anything about the subject matter, but with high ratings by critics I was looking forward to it. Basically it is biopic about Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century. The difference with this film is there is not a single narrative, it is made up of thirty-one short films, or vignettes (sketches) (the thirty-second film is the end credits), mostly featuring Gould's music.The thirty-two short films are: 1) Aria - a man walking in a white wilderness. 2) Lake Simcoe - Glenn's childhood, his Mother (Katya Ladan) watching him learning to play piano. 3) Forty-five Seconds and a Chair - Glenn Gould (Colm Feore) sat in a chair. 4) Bruno Monsaingeon: musician and collaborator. 5) Gould Meets Gould: text by Glenn Gould - Gould talking to himself in a studio. 6) Hamburg - Gould diagnosed with bronchitis in the lung, then doing a piano recording and doing something with the maid. 7) Variation of C Minor - an animation of an audio wave line. 8) Practise. 9) The L.A. Concert - Gould walking through the theatre corridors meeting people. 10) CD318 - piano playing on stage, with close-ups of they keys, hammers and strings. 11) Yehudi Menuhin: violinist. 12) Passion According to Gould - Gould listening to piano. 13) Opus 1: a Composition by Glenn Gould - four men sitting playing string instruments. 14) Crossed Paths - various friends and colleagues interviewed. 15) Truck Stop - "Downtown" by Petula Clark playing in a roadside diner, there is eavesdropping on many conversations. 16) The Idea of North: A Radio Interview by Glenn Gould. 17) Solitude - Gould walking and talking in the snow with an invisible interviewer. 18) Questions with No Answers - journalists and interviewers asking Gould questions, face to face and on telephone, no responses are heard. 19) A Letter. 20) Gould Meets McLaren: Animation by Norman McLaren - dancing spheres in a forward moving sky. 21) The Tip - phone calls about shares in Sotex. 22) Personal Ad - Gould advertising to find someone as odd as him. 23) Pills - close-ups of drugs, with names and descriptions given, and their side effects. 24) Margaret Pacsu: friend. 25) Diary of One Day - writing of words and number sums on screen, and an x-ray of a body moving and the brain. 26) Motel Wawa - an interview on the telephone, and a window looking out to a beach. 27) Forty-Nine - Gould in a phone booth. 28) Jessie Greig: cousin. 29) Leaving - driving and Gould dying, following a stroke he suffered brain damage and was taken off life support. 30) Voyager - a space shuttle launch. 31) Aria - a repeat sequence. 32) End Credits.Also starring Derek Keurvorst as Gould's Father, Devon Anderson as Young Glenn Age 3, Joshua Greenblatt as Young Glenn Age 8, Sean Ryan as Young Glenn Age 12, Kate Hennig as Chambermaid and Sean Doyle as Porter. Feore gives a remarkable performance as the talented musician, the music of the real Gould is beautiful and goes well with the scenes, the editing is well done, and each segment, whether its acted, an interview or animated adds something different, you can draw your own conclusion of the real man being focused, a brilliantly crafted and most interesting biographical drama. Very good!

Glenn Gould was a classical pianist of the first order. Made famous for his recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variation's, first in 1955 and then in 1981. As the short films show, Gould was an oddball with tremendous talent. He hummed along while playing, and was totally unaware of this quirk. The recording engineers were driven insane by this habit which can be heard on the final product.He was also a hypochondriac, constantly taking his own blood pressure and several medications simultaneously, which he chronicled in a diary.Some of the one to six minute segments are recreations, and others are interviews with people who knew him. The soundtrack is magnificent, for Gould's technique is breathtaking. Thirty Two Short Films is the story of a true genius whose life ended much too soon at the age of fifty, an almost self fulfilling prophecy, given the man's obsessive behavior. I loved this sad and beautiful movie.

This week we watch a non-linear film tilted Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. This film took thirty-two vignettes that concern some aspect of Glenn Gould's life. Vignette is that in theatre and script writing, these are short, impressionistic, scenes that focus on one moment or gives one impression about a character, an idea or a setting. Each of these thirty-two shorts are glimpses into the life of Gould, they are like puzzle pieces that we, because of the non-linear aspects, are forced to piece together the life of Gould. It was 32 shorts that were all different from each other, which helped to bring out the theme. It is possibly named after a musical piece that Gould did an interpretation on, Bach's Goldberg Variations. Because these vignettes are broken up into various sections it was more interested than if it were linear. The shorts demand out attention in order to make connections between the disassociation of these clips. In order for us to understand the irrational we must use the irrational thought to explain it.I think that this was done beautifully in Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. We are drawn in to the film by the various clips and the beautiful music that we hear. The beat of the video draws us to want to learn about this man who in this documentary tells his own story. This man seems to interview himself. He holds his interviews by telephone. While he is on a phone conversation he talks through out the night to himself while the person on the other side of the line has fallen asleep. On a play of what was going on, he would introduce his own thoughts by asking himself a question, and then he acted out the answer. This helped us to understand who he was and helped us look at him subjectively.This man was a genius, in his musical abilities many were awed. It could be said that isolation can breed genius but genius can breed isolation. Is it possible that this is what happened to Gould? Who knows what could have been going on in his mind? An outward appearance that we get of him is his clothes. He would wear layers of clothes even in the summer time to prevent from catching a cold. There is a short where we see all the various pills Gould was taking trying to balance each other out shown in various shapes, sizes, and color.The music that we hear is what connected Gould to the rest of the world but at the same time it kept him separated from it. Technology was able to help Gould perfect his music. There is a clip where Gould is in a recording studio and we are listening to a play back of a recording he just made. He says that after listening to it that it is almost good. The recording seems to takes the soul out of music. He decides that he wants to re-record the track, so he prepares to play, but we don't see him play. The show is about a piano player but we never saw him playing the piano. It is possible that he hated the instrument that he is most known for. You would think that since this is a documentary about a piano player that you would get to see him play, but you don't. Is this out of respect for him, he is so into his music that it was about him and not his music. It could also be that the film is not about him but about who he was. A genius mind is very complex and often difficult or hard to understand. I think the film does well to try and portray the randomness of a genius mind in the style of non-linear film where we are forced to use our own minds to make the connections in the life of Glenn Gould.

I saw this on DVD and enjoyed it thoroughly. The means of portraying a person - through short and disconnected vignettes - was surprisingly natural. When you think about it, this is often how we learn about people: a collection of stories, incidents, things their friends say about them, memories from childhood. Not only that, but it nicely parallels some of the music, such as the short pieces in Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier. Each has a different mood, but together they paint a complete picture. This movie is a lot of fun for anyone who is fond of classical music and willing to experiment a little bit with film.