If you try to explain the life of Glenn Gould using a standard Hollywood script, you're going to fail. Miserably. How do you map out a man who hummed while he played, wore wool mittens in the middle of a sweltering July, and abandoned the concert stage at the absolute peak of his fame because he hated the "blood sport" of live performance? You don't. You can't. Not with a traditional three-act structure, anyway.
That is exactly why Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould works.
Released in 1993 and directed by François Girard, this film doesn't even try to be a "movie" in the way we usually think of them. It's a mosaic. A collection of fragments. It’s basically the cinematic equivalent of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which, if you know anything about Gould, was the piece that defined him. 32 variations, 32 short films. It’s a bit literal, sure, but it’s brilliant.
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Breaking the Biopic Mold
Most biopics follow a predictable path: the childhood struggle, the rise to fame, the drug-addled middle years, and the triumphant or tragic ending. Boring. Honestly, it’s a formula that feels increasingly dishonest. Girard and co-writer Don McKellar realized that Gould’s life wasn't a narrative; it was a series of intellectual obsessions.
They didn't want to put Gould in a box. So, they gave us 32 different boxes.
Some of these "films" are only a minute long. Others are full-blown dramatic scenes. You’ve got documentary interviews with real people who knew him—like the legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin—mixed in with scripted moments where Colm Feore plays Gould with an eerie, twitchy precision.
That Famous Dining Scene
There is one segment called "Truck Stop" that perfectly captures why this film is special. Gould is sitting in a roadside diner in northern Ontario. He’s not playing the piano. He’s not talking. He’s just... listening.
The soundtrack begins to layer the sounds of the diner: the clinking of silverware, the waitress taking an order, a radio playing in the background, and the fragmented conversations of the truckers nearby. For Gould, this wasn't noise. It was counterpoint. He heard the world as music. The film forces you to hear it that way too. You start to realize that for a guy who spent his life in "solitude," he was actually deeply connected to the frequency of everything around him.
Colm Feore and the Art of the Stare
Playing a genius is a trap for most actors. They usually go for the "tortured soul" trope or lean too hard into the "wacky eccentric" bit. Colm Feore did something much smarter. He focused on the eyes and the hands.
There’s a short titled "Forty-Five Seconds and a Chair." It is literally just a shot of Feore as Gould sitting in his famous, spindly, sawed-off chair (the one his father made him, which he used until it literally fell apart). He just stares into the lens. It’s uncomfortable. It’s intimate. It makes you feel like you’re being scrutinized by a guy who can hear your pulse from across the room.
Interestingly, the filmmakers made a deliberate choice: you never actually see Feore's hands on the keys during the complex parts. Why? Because nobody can fake being Glenn Gould. His technique was too weird, his fingers too flat, his posture too slumped. By not showing the "acting" of the piano playing, the film keeps the mystery of the music intact. You hear the real Gould recordings—those crisp, detached, lightning-fast notes—and you see the man, but the bridge between them remains a bit of a ghost.
The Obsessions: Pills, Technology, and the North
Gould was a bit of a mess, health-wise. Or at least, he thought he was. The film doesn't shy away from his hypochondria. There’s a montage of his medication that’s almost psychedelic—a rainbow of pills for ailments that may or may not have existed. He was a man who lived in a state of constant self-defense against the world.
Then there’s the technology. Gould was obsessed with the idea that the "recording" was the ultimate art form. He thought live concerts were dead. He loved the "creative cheating" of the editing room—splicing together the perfect take from ten different attempts. To him, that wasn't being fake; it was being a "director" of music.
The Voyager Connection
The film ends on a note that still gives me chills. It talks about the Voyager spacecraft. In 1977, NASA sent a "Golden Record" into deep space, containing sounds and music from Earth in case aliens ever find it. One of the tracks? Glenn Gould playing Bach.
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The visual here is stunning: a tiny black speck (Gould) walking across a vast, frozen Canadian landscape. It’s the ultimate image of his life. He wanted to be a signal sent into the void. He wanted his music to exist outside of time, outside of the messy reality of human contact.
Why You Should Care Now
In an era of AI-generated content and hyper-polished celebrity brand deals, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould feels like an antidote. It’s a film about the texture of a mind. It’s weird, it’s cold, it’s funny, and it’s deeply Canadian.
If you’re tired of movies that explain everything to you like you’re five years old, this is for you. It doesn't tell you "Glenn Gould was a genius because X, Y, and Z." It just lets you sit in the room with him while he hums along to a radio.
Actionable Ways to Experience the Gould Phenomenon
- Watch the film on Criterion: It recently got a 4K remaster. The sound design is the star here, so wear good headphones.
- Listen to the 1955 vs. 1981 Goldberg Variations: The film heavily references his relationship with this piece. The first recording is a young man’s sprint; the second is an old man’s meditation. Hearing the difference explains more than any dialogue could.
- Read "The Glenn Gould Reader": If the "Gould Meets Gould" segment of the film intrigued you, go to the source. He was a hilarious, caustic, and brilliant writer.
- Look up the "Solitude Trilogy": Gould wasn't just a pianist; he was a radio producer. His documentary The Idea of North uses the same "contrapuntal" interviewing style seen in the diner scene of the movie.
The film doesn't provide a neat conclusion because Gould didn't have one. He died at 50, just as he was starting to talk about giving up the piano to become a conductor. He remained an enigma. By the time the credits roll, you don't necessarily "know" Glenn Gould better, but you feel him. And in the world of art, that's a much bigger win.