Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Tuesday, March 8, 2011) (187)

This is an interesting biodoc about the great and eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. It tells his life, in great detail, from his childhood in music school to his breaking out as a star in Canada, to his early tour in Soviet Russia and then his debut in New York City. It shows how he was always a bit unusual, and how he got more and more isolated and weird as time went on.

This is a very, very long movie and feels like it's at least 20-30 minutes too long. I think there's a lot of detail that could have been cut out. It's not really about his "inner" life, as the title would suggest, but rather about how the world saw him and how he responded to the pressure. I guess when you're a genius and an eccentric, it's not totally fair to expect that we would see inside his soul.

Strangely there's very little mention of his psychological situation and the directors Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont barely address the fact that he was a paranoid, obsessive-compulsive person who might have been sociopathic and was hardly able to make many connections with many people. It's possible that his mental state led him to become the artist he was, but it would still have been interesting to see an analysis of his mind.

Most of the film is told with still pictures of Gould, along with film footage of his interviews (he was always being interviewed and filmed) and radio shows as well as interviews with his associates and few friends looking back at his life. One thing the directors do that I didn't like is in the final third of the film, they have an actor walking around aimlessly wrapped up in a coat and scarf (the way we had seen Gould do earlier in his life) and suggest this is him. It is not him - it's just a stand-in for him. This is not really necessary and adds a bizarre layer of non-reality to the film that doesn't help tell his story.

This is an interesting movie because Gould's life was interesting, but it does not work well from a script point of view. Some of the detail of his later, non-performing life should have been cut down as should some of background on his one big love affair (which doesn't really fit in to the film).

Stars: 2 of 4