‘Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould’ 4K UHD Blu-ray Review

Some three many years after its launch, it’s disheartening, but maybe not stunning, that extra filmmakers haven’t regarded to François Girard’s singular Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould for inspiration on how one can break away from the stifling conventions of the trendy biopic. And due to the deadening uniformity of the style, Girard’s movie seems all of the extra miraculous on reflection.

From its rigorous and intentionally distancing structural gambit to its stressed stylistic experimentations, Thirty Two Short Films proves that biopics needn’t shade inside the traces to successfully painting their topics. However extra importantly, it exhibits that by approaching mentioned topic with a kaleidoscopic spectrum of aural and visible conceits, the biopic is able to unlocking a deeper appreciation for and understanding of them. And definitely to a level that may’t be attained by way of mere historic and biographical particulars and re-enactment.

In fact, Girard’s movie is cognizant that its topic, the famed Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould, should be fictionally embodied indirectly. And it does so initially within the second of its 32 quick movies, following a short prologue, with a 45-second sluggish zoom right into a close-up of the face of the actor, Colm Feore, who can be enjoying him. But, in prefacing this shot with a title card (“45 Seconds and a Chair”), Girard calls consideration to the artifice that’s so deeply intertwined along with his presentation of the legendary artist. This reminds us from the get-go that Feore is however an avatar, shifting our connection to Gould from emotional to mental, and our attentions from his particular person psychology towards his music and method to artwork.

Fittingly, the entire shorts that comprise Thirty Two Short Films are launched with their very own separate title playing cards. This tactic disrupts the movie’s continuity in such a way that even the few stretches that verge on direct biographical illustration are rendered as small fragments of the bigger, extra summary portrait that Girard, co-writer Don McKellar, and editor Gaétan Huot sew collectively, eschewing the hagiography bent of so many “nice man” biopics.

Together with mirroring Gould’s structural method to music and referencing his recording of “Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C Minor,” the narrative construction that Girard and McKellar impose on their movie permits for a playful and invigorating mélange of documentary, fiction, and avant-garde methods. Interviews of a few of Gould’s precise family and friends brush up towards varied items by Gould enjoying over a shot of the movie’s optical sound strip or sweeping monitoring pictures of the inside of a Steinway piano. There’s even a brief animated sequence in addition to one exhibiting Gould enjoying the piano in X-ray imaginative and prescient because the pianist’s diary entry’s obsessively recording his blood strain are learn in voiceover.

Apart from giving the viewers one thing formally creative and uniquely fascinating at almost each flip, Thirty Two Short Films intentionally heightens and sharpens our auditory senses, utilizing photographs to focus on and join us to the music itself. It does so primarily by way of structural absence, particularly by by no means having Feore, as Gould, pretending to play the piano for the digital camera, thus eradicating our instinctive emotional response to Feore in these sequences and as a substitute directing our minds and ears to the musical notes themselves.

For all its aesthetic experimentation, Thirty Two Short Films is exceptionally unified—every phase approaching Gould, and his work, from a unique approach. But, in contrast to most biopics about nice artists, Girard’s movie understands that no easy, biographically complete movie can get us near their means of seeing, listening to, and experiencing the world. It neither contributes to nor absolutely punctures the mythology surrounding Gould, shrewdly presenting him as each man and enigma and providing an incomplete portrait that also will get proper on the coronary heart of what makes him such an unparalleled determine in his area.

Picture/Sound

Transferred from a brand new 4K restoration, Criterion’s presentation options a picture wealthy intimately. There’s a formidable vary of heat autumnal tones in lots of scenes, whereas the winter-set sequences are suitably cool, with blistering whites and icy blues dominating the colour palette. Becoming for a movie so explicitly specializing in music, the audio steals the present right here, with the 5.1 combine presenting Glenn Gould’s music with depth and resonance, whereas the scenes within the diner and Gould’s recording sales space, the place the movie highlights the pianist’s potential to completely comprehend a number of conversations directly, present how fastidiously the audio tracks are layered.

Extras

Author-director François Girard and co-writer-actor Don McKellar’s new audio commentary will get into the nitty gritty of their analysis course of, how McKellar initially turned concerned with the venture, and the way they made varied selections concerning the weird construction of the movie. It’s a full of life dialog that additionally touches on a lot of Gould’s profession, and it’s clear that over 30 years later, each males nonetheless have a passion for his music and their movie.

In a full of life 30-minute dialog between Girard and Atom Egoyan, the administrators delve into the totally different artwork and movie scenes in Toronto and Quebec from the Nineteen Sixties to the ’80s. Additionally they discuss how Girard, being French Canadian, approached this materials with much less reverence than most Toronto filmmakers would have, and the way the movie is all the higher for it.

We additionally get a pair of archival interviews, one with actor Colm Feore from 2012, wherein he touches on the challenges of the casting course of and embodying Gould by way of his uncommon speech patterns greater than the rest, and one with producer Niv Fichman, who waxes rhapsodic about Gould and his longstanding want to make a movie in regards to the pianist earlier than Thirty Two Short Films got here alongside. Lastly, there are a pair of fascinating 30-minute companion docs from 1959, which give attention to his non-public life and recording course of, and a booklet with an essay by Michael Koresky, who writes eloquently in regards to the movie’s “symphonic building.”

General

With a good looking switch and terrific slate of extras, Criterion’s stellar 4K launch celebrates the singularity of each Glenn Gould and François Girard’s biopic about him.