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Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould

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Canada · 2009
1h 53m
Director Peter Raymont
Starring Glenn Gould, Kevin Bazzana, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Fred Sherry
Genre Documentary, Music

A documentary on the influential virtuoso pianist, Glenn Gould. This documentary follows the life and career of this mysterious and eccentric icon, from his historic 1957 tour of the Soviet Union, early retirement from live performance at the age of 31, and his personal life including his struggle with pills and hypochondria.

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What are critics saying?

50

Boxoffice Magazine by

The film, despite its promise to excavate an inner life, wilts into banality whenever Gould's thorny paranoia and control issues come up.

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

Time Out by Keith Uhlich

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.

70

NPR by Mark Jenkins

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.

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