Gould forgot his ice house and had to go back for it. He hoped to catch eelpout, but it was an unlucky day.
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993) provoked two salient comments from my Arts Editor as we watched. First, she was intrigued. Second, the What The Fuck factor was through the roof.
This is an obtuse look at the reclusive star pianist Glenn Gould, through 32 (I didn’t actually count) pieces chronicling his life from his introduction to music while still in the womb, to an interview with a cousin with whom he suddenly discussed death and death rituals shortly before dying of a stroke at age 50. The forms vary. There are several short interviews; there are recreations, perhaps fanciful, of various incidents; there are speculations, perhaps, on what he might have said; there is even investigations of his short and illuminating, if only in metaphorical black light, mini-plays.
It’s a presentation conducive to speculation, because, in a way, when it’s not being directly informative, it’s a bit of a Rorschach test. If you want to see a mentally ill performer, you can. If you prefer to see a neurally atypical person, that’s there. Someone who was never subjected to a normal childhood, someone who saw music as a world unto itself, deserving of a perfection he forever pursued and forever failed to completely deliver.
Have at it.
And that’s not a bad thing, especially if you’re able to speculate over two or more domains, although I suspect a fictional interview section, labeled as having the text supplied by Gould himself, might be a subtle joke about just such speculation, as the more obscure the speculation, the more the real center of the discussion is the leader of the discussion itself, rather than the subject.
Ahem.
I know very little about music, but I enjoyed it. My Arts Editor, a singer and artist, enjoyed it moreso. If you have a taste for something besides the latest Stan Lee-derived creation, you may enjoy this.
Or, at least, be intrigued.
