Paleo Retiree writes:

Meditation/reflection from 2005 on the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould by the filmmaker and television producer Bruno Monsaingeon, who knew Gould well and worked with him often. Probably not the movie for newcomers to Gould to start with, but very interesting and enjoyable for a number of reasons. The main one: There’s lots of informal, backstage, end-of-the-roll type footage of Gould, lots of amazing performances (formal and informal), and lots of talks with him — Gould buffs won’t want to miss the film just for its many unusual glimpses of Gould at work and play.

For another, the film’s view of Gould is fascinating. The film isn’t intended to be terribly straightforward or informative; instead, it’s an idea and a vision movie. For Monsaingeon, Gould embodied Eternal Spirit. He arrived here on earth, incarnated in this bodily form; he connected with music (and connected us with music) in a very pure way — music here is the ongoingness through time and across space of Spirit; and then he left. (Gould died in 1982 at the age of 50.) But, thanks to his recordings, he’s still around, still with us, and still helping us make that connection. (The film’s title, “Glenn Gould: Hereafter,” is meant to have several different meanings.)

The movie is deliberately structured to be circular and repetitive — like a fugue — and it makes its case over and over in a number of different ways. But, though it’s as idea-driven as can be, it isn’t overbearing or rigid. And Monsaingeon is smart in a very understated way about what to highlight. Gould makes a comment about how what he wanted to do was turn performance into composition … Gould debates (in a friendly way) with his collaborator Yehudi Menuhin about live performance … It’s a very intelligent, sympathetic (Monsaingeon is an excellent musician himself) and persuasive vision and view. Comprehensive, too: Gould’s abandonment of the stage for the recording studio, his quirks, the games he liked to play, his fascination with Bach and Schoenberg … Everything seems to fit. Life as Idea; Idea as Spirit; incarnate existence as our momentary experience of something much larger; music as a way of evoking and reflecting on the tragicomic state we all inhabit; music as the purest embodiment we can know of Spirit …

All that said — and thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated — as a viewing experience the film is a little dull. It lacks something: sweep, excitement, rapture. It’s a genuine intellectual’s movie: the ideas lead and the filmmaking follows. So we get lots of shots of an actor portraying Gould walking by the side of water, or driving a Lincoln Continental (Gould’s car) through autumnal Northern landscapes … We’re given five or six episodes (they range from semi-staged to interviews) depicting people whose lives have been touched and changed by contact with Gould and/or his music … These passages are more than a little plodding. But, for me, this film was one of those rare cases where dozey and plodding is OK. Monsaingeon is taking his time; he’s letting his thoughts wander off in ways that seem appropriate to Gould. He isn’t pushing things; he’s letting his images and sounds work their own kind of magic. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t … but then, soon enough, we’re back to the actual Gould, who always conveys something exciting.

The version of the film that we watched on Amazon Instant lacked subtitles, so the passages where fans from many countries (Italy, Russia, Japan) spoke about Gould were unintelligible to us. If you’re curious about the picture you might want to buy the DVD instead. But we really didn’t mind much not being to follow the words in those stretches.

Related

• The excellent Tim Page hated “Glenn Gould: Hereafter.”
• A piece about composer biopics that I wrote for Opera News, one of today’s best arts magazines.
• François Girard’s “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould” is a beauty: a biopic of the pianist made in a style completely suited to its subject. It features an amazing performance by Colm Feore.