A rare film biography as boldly unconventional as its subject, writer-director François Girard’s visionary portrait of iconoclastic, world-renowned pianist Glenn Gould explodes the conventions of the form to illuminate the brilliant mind and innermost obsessions of a singular artist. Across thirty-two vignettes encompassing everything from dramatic sketches to documentary interviews to avant-garde animation, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould pieces together the story of Gould’s trajectory from child prodigy to celebrated concert pianist who turned his back on public performance to pursue his all-consuming fascination with recording technology. Led by a tour-de-force performance by Colm Feore and underscored by Gould’s landmark recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Girard’s film daringly deconstructs the enigma of genius.
Technical Specifications
Supplements
- New audio commentary featuring François Girard and cowriter and actor Don McKellar
- New conversation between François Girard and filmmaker Atom Egoyan
- Glenn Gould: Off the Record and Glenn Gould: On the Record, companion programs from 1959 produced for Canadian television
- Archival interviews with actor Colm Feore and producer Niv Fichman
- Trailer
- An essay by author and film critic Michael Koresky