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With:
Colm Feore, Derek Keurvorst, Katya Ladan, Devon Anderson, Joshua Greenblatt, Sean Ryan, Kate Hennig, Sharon Bernbaum, Don McKellar, David Hughes, Carlo Rota, Peter Millard, John Dolan, Allegra Fulton, Guy Thauvette, Gerry Quigley, Gale Garnett, David Young, Marie-Josée Gauthier, Nick McKinney, Moynan King, Michael Kopsa, Len Doncheff, Jimmy Loftus, Frank Canino, Bruno Monsaingeon, Yehudi Menuhin, Margaret Pacsu, Jessie Grieg, Megan Smith-Harris, Walter Homburger, Ray Roberts, Bob Phillips, Jill R. Cobb, Bob Silverman, Elyse Mach, Mario Prizak, Valerie Verity, Vern Edquist, Bruno Monsaingeon, Gilles Apap, Jean-Marc Apap, Marc Coppey
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Written by:
François Girard, Don McKellar
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Directed by:
François Girard
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MPAA Rating:
NR
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Running Time:
93
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Date:
04/15/1994
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Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993)
The Gould Variations
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Every year Hollywood trots out three or four generic biopics, structured roughly the same way, using the same formula, in the hopes of catching the eyes of Oscar voters. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, they tell a life story from A to Z with little variation, and it gets boring. That's why the new Criterion Blu-ray and 4K release of François Girard's
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
should be celebrated. It shows a clear example of how those kinds of movies can be made, not only how they can break out of their rut, but how they can be drastically improved upon.
Co-written by Don McKellar (who appears as a concert promoter), the movie follows the legendary pianist (Colm Feore), who made a career interpreting great pieces of classical music, especially Bach. The little segments give us some biographical background on him, how he retired from performing, and how he devoted himself to a life of making recordings. (He believed that making recordings was the only true way to have an equitable relationship between artist and appreciator.) There's a wonderfully quiet moment in which he signs his last autograph just before going on stage for his last show.
Other sequences are documentary-like, interviewing the people that knew him. And still other sequences are animated shorts. (Norman McLaren provided one segment.) There's a segment in which Gould interviews himself, one in which he sits in a diner and listens to the conversations around him (they converge into a soundscape), and another that discusses the various pills he was taking and their complicated side effects. All of the segments are like facets on a diamond, each with its own task, but all adding up to something suggesting not just a story, but an actual human life.
Criterion's 2025 Blu-ray includes a remastered transfer with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, a new commentary track by Girard and McKellar, a new conversation between Girard and filmmaker Atom Egoyan, two short documentaries on Gould from 1959, archival interviews with star Feore and producer Niv Fichman, a trailer, and optional English subtitles. Author and film critic Michael Koresky provides the liner notes essay.
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