“I know only how to reflect: I am a mirror”
—Sviatoslav Richter
“I cannot say I am in total agreement with Mr. Gould’s conception. And this raises the interesting question: What am I doing conducting it? I’m conducting it because Mr. Gould is so valid and serious an artist that I must take seriously anything he conceives in good faith and his conception is interesting enough so that I feel you should hear it, too. But the age old question still remains: In a concerto, who is the boss, the soloist or the conductor?
—Leonard Bernstein
nziff ’10: Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould
Dir. Michèle Hozer & Peter Raymont | Canada | 2009 | 108 mins.
he contrast between Sviatoslav Richter and Glenn Gould is interesting. They are perhaps the two most widely admired pianists of the twentieth century, and the significant differences in their theoretical and technical approach to the piano is matched only by the depth of admiration they had for each other.
It is also hard to imagine two more wildly differing personalities. Richter was retiring, modest and unwilling to consciously impose his personality on the music he played; instead, he valued as paramount the intentions of the composer. Gould was strange. He wore heavy coats in summer, carried around a custom built chair (he would refuse to play on anything else) and dedicated many hours of his life to producing radio shows that concerned, amongst other things, the theory of music and nature.
It was not just Gould’s quirks that were odd enough to attract the attention of a bemused press; his approach to music was so bold and idiosyncratic that his landmark recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in 1955 made him something of a celebrity. His fame reached as far afield as the Soviet Union, and he was invited to perform a series of concerts in Moscow. It was during these concerts that Richter first heard Gould play the Goldberg Variations. Richter was so taken by the performance that he resolved never to record the same piece. He felt, I suppose, that the piece “belonged” to Gould. This excess of modesty—with a tinge of self-deprecation—was typically, and infuriatingly, Richter. Yet Richter, according to Gould, was one of the most powerful pianists of our age.
Richter and Gould provide two very different listening experiences. Richter’s force grabs the listener by the throat, offering no intellectual pretence; Gould’s technical mastery and innovative approach astound, but can give the impression of someone who is perhaps just too clever for their own good. Of course, how could anyone who devotes an entire radio show to prove that Mozart was a bad composer not be just a little conceited? On the other hand, there is something endearing about singing to elephants (as Gould did in one particularly memorable television broadcast) that causes even the most serious of music critics to crack a smile just long enough to forget the giant dildo of musical history that is forever jammed up their assholes.
Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould could have been one of the most interesting films at the film festival. It wasn’t. Consider that pivotal connection between Richter and Gould. In it, the directors have been gifted the perfect vehicle to display Gould’s eccentricities. It would have been satisfying to see the film contemplate the pianist’s theory of music and set it against a life that exuded a danger that was sufficient to lure women away from their husbands, but strange enough to make them want to return—no doubt under the impression that irresponsible capriciousness counts as a sublime expression of human freedom.
Though his love affair with a composer’s wife is interesting, the over-abundance of intrigue concerning the “love triangle” between himself and Cornelia and Lukas Foss (the achingly bohemian painter-composer couple) comes worryingly close to providing a Woman’s Weekly perspective on Gould’s life. Instead of relationship problems, the film ought to have dwelled—at least a little—on Gould’s aspirations to leave music and focus on recording radio shows and perhaps begin composing. These desires and professional impulses can be just as interesting as an affair.
The film does begin strongly. Gould’s youth is treated tactfully: we learn about many interesting details of his childhood and are told a little more about his parents, who have inevitably not received much attention in the past. His love of singing is touched upon, as is the fact that he was able to read music before he could read words. From this point up until the Goldberg Variations and his brilliant performances in Moscow, the film commands the viewer’s complete attention. The soundtrack is superb: the most brilliant recordings of Gould’s early career are selected to accompany his ascent. Unfortunately, we are not given much of insight into the then-prevailing attitudes regarding the performance of classical music and modern composition; the mood was certainly a lot less stuffy than some less historically-knowledgeable viewers might imagine.
This lack of context is not devastating, but it seems odd that the filmmakers, so keen on exposing Gould’s “inner life” do not help us understand it by touching on the lives he was rubbing up against. The high praise of Richter would have been a wonderful addition to the film; instead, a photo of the two pops briefly into the screen and then disappears.
It would be stupid to expect every single aspect of this man’s life could be covered. In retrospect, however, this avoidance of any substantive look at his musical development does seem to be indicative of a mild superficiality. We do understand that Gould is kooky, and we certainly wonder how this affects his personal life. However, his philosophy was such a fundamentally important part of his life that it is impossible to ignore it. Sadly, we are only given vague illusions and incomplete thoughts. Why do we not hear about his opinions on Mozart? We observe him radically deconstructing Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A whilst making a few offhand comments about Mozart’s naïveté. I willed the film to delve further into the mind it purported to be revealing. Instead, we have here in the latter half an interesting but very mild—and meandering—ramble through Gould’s later life, along with a number of banal and all-too-obvious, expected comments on how his eccentricities affected his life.
The film’s chronological progression is banal. While a thematic approach to Gould’s life would probably have yielded greater insights into the different facets of his personality, the film instead goes from youth—concentrating here on his prodigious musical ability—to his middle age, then to his late years and then finally to his death. Due to this progression, the film loses much of the energy which made its first half so brilliant; the slow pace becomes a little tedious in parts, particularly as the opinions of those who knew Gould are overshadowed by far more interesting excerpts from interviews with Gould himself.
I do not intend this as a condemnation. My impatience with the latter half is generated in a large part by my frustration that such wonderful potential was not met. Nonetheless, the portrayal of Gould is sensitive enough to cause my attitude towards him to warm. Perhaps he was too enraptured by his own ability to re-interpret great composers—and too popular with baby boomers, who were clearly glad to finally know something about “high art”—but he was a genius all the same, a sentiment this film does an honorable job of echoing. Perhaps that is enough.
By Guy Incognito
