50
The film, despite its promise to excavate an inner life, wilts into banality whenever Gould's thorny paranoia and control issues come up.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
A tour de force of archival research and dogged interviewing, and the portrait it presents is remarkably complete.
75
St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Joe Williams
Post-Dispatch classical music critic Sarah Bryan Miller told me that Gould's music is as divisive today as it was 50 years ago, when the pianist publicly clashed with conductor Leonard Bernstein over the tempo of a performance.
60
Gould is as much of a mystery at the end as at the beginning. You get the feeling that's the way he'd have wanted it.
80
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
What is most involving about Gould is the extraordinary way he played.
70
A fine overview, with enough new material to please Gould buffs. But the film fails to demonstrate that conventional biography is the best path to its subject's inner life.
70
Village Voice by Nick Pinkerton
Devotees will perhaps find something new in this deep pool of archival footage, and newcomers will get an appropriate introduction to the beguiling charisma of a most media-savvy isolationist.
91
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
It's an inescapable fact that Gould's singular musical insights – the way he brought out in Bach a mesmeric unity of sound – could only have arisen from a singular personality.