Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yet Another Brilliant Musical Retrospective from Bruno Monsaingeon, 20 Sep 2006
This DVD is self-recommending if only because it is by our leading music documentarian, Bruno Monsaingeon, and is about one of music's legendary figures, Glenn Gould. Add to that the fact that Monsaingeon and Gould were friends for thirty years and that Monsaingeon had already made a number of previous documentaries about Gould, and you have a recipe for a great film. Monsaingeon is a working musician (a violinist) as well and his ability to understand the musical aspects of Gould's life is beyond question. (There is even a clip of Monsaingeon playing first violin in a snippet of Gould's Opus 1, his String Quartet.) Gould, of course, was himself a documentarian and he certainly left behind miles of film in which he plays, discourses about music and all manner of other things. There are even home movies of Gould as a young teen playing on the family piano.
One charming conceit of the film is that Monsaingeon found five 'ordinary people' whose lives had been touched in special ways by Gould's playing and he filmed them in various activities connected with that. For instance, there is a former rock musician who goes pretty far to commemorate her emotional connection with Gould -- I won't spoil the surprise by telling you what it was she did. There is a Russian woman who develops a missionary fervor about exposing others to Gould's music. There is an Italian woman who makes a pilgrimage to Toronto and has a dialog with the startlingly lifelike statue of Gould that sits outside the Gould studio there.
One might wonder what more could be said about Gould after all the previous books and films about him. It is a tribute to Monsaingeon's art that he found a way to approach his subject in a new and fascinating manner. He constructs the documentary as if it were being narrated by Gould himself. Gould's fabled Lincoln Continental becomes a character in the proceedings, traveling through ravishingly photographed northern Canadian forests as we hear Gould discourse in a voice-over on various things. There are numerous video and audio clips, some never seen before, that give us a taste of both his playing and his thinking. We hear and see him play music not generally associated with him -- especially by those who think of Gould as being a Bach specialist -- music by Hindemith, Chopin, Weber, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and others, even Gould's quirky Mozart.
Gould's personal eccentricities are not emphasized but are not avoided either. One does, however, come away, yet again, reminded of George Szell's famous remark about him, 'That nut is a genius!'. Gould was an utterly unique and important figure and it is no wonder that almost twenty-five years after his tragic death at 50, in 1982, his life is still being explored and celebrated.
So, even if you've seen other films about Gould, including those by Monsaingeon, you will be rewarded by watching this film.
Strongly recommended.
Scott Morrison
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A treat for any Glenn Gould fan, 24 Aug 2006
I have just watched this DVD and it's wonderful ! Bruno Monsaigneon has done a beautiful job of welding film of Glenn Gould with information about him and music he played in a way of which I'm sure Gould would have much approved. There's lots of new footage which hasn't appeared on previous DVDs, insights by Monsaigneon, and lots of music other than Bach ! It is very moving to watch.
My only criticism of the DVD is that sometimes the soundtrack is slightly out of sync with the picture.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
frustrating., 23 Mar 2007
Bruno Monsaingeon obviously has access to a wealth of amazing footage of Glenn Gould in conversation and performance, but instead of simply presenting it to us he feels the need to chop it into the most tantalising slithers in an attempt to produce a work of art of his own. In place of full, unedited original archive material are lengthy, pointless interviews with idiotic Gould fans as well as footage of a Glenn Gould LOOKALIKE walking around Toronto, with narration by a Glenn Gould SOUNDALIKE.
This film is all the more disappointing since Monsaingeon has previously made some wonderful films on Glenn Gould and an astonishing film about Sviatoslav Richter.
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