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CAPSULE: THIRTY TWO SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD (1993)

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DIRECTED BY: François Girard

FEATURING: Colm Feore

PLOT: A patchwork of short vignettes explores the allure of the eccentric piano virtuoso.

Still from thirty two short films about glenn gould (1993)

COMMENTS: I discovered my all-time favorite recording, Glenn Gould’s complete “The Well-Tempered Clavier,” and François Girard’s Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould at about the same time. I can’t definitively remember which I encountered first: my guess would be Girard’s film, because it is such an effective advertisement for Gould’s genius that it seems likely to have inspired a purchase. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible that I saw there was a film out about this marvelous pianist who accompanied his nimble fingers with ecstatic spontaneous humming,  breathing humanity into Bach’s precise baroque miniatures, and knew I had to learn more about this man. I do know that Gould’s “Clavier” was reissued in on CD in 1993, likely to coincide with this film, and I love to imagine I actually picked up that set from Tower Records and rented a VHS of Thirty Two Films from my local mom and pop video store on the same weekend in 1993 or 1994.

The movie does what it says on the tin (although some might object to calling the closing credits a “short film.”) The sequences break down into four main categories: documentary-style interviews with friends and co-workers, dramatic reenactments of events in the pianist’s life, adaptations of Gould’s own works, and abstract experimental sketches. The interviews are illuminating, and give the film its hybrid documentary character. The dramatic scenes form the bulk of the movie. They follow in a roughly chronological format, but do not tell a continuing story: each is a standalone vignette. Memorable moments show Gould corralling his hotel chambermaid to listen to his hot-off-the-presses LP and the Gould mesmerized by contrapuntal conversations he hears in a diner. A performance of “String Quartet, Opus 1,” one of his few original compositions, an excerpt from the word collage “The Idea of North,” and a dramatization of a portion of his puckish essay “Glenn Gould Interviews Glenn Gould About Glenn Gould” ground us in the legend’s actual creative output. The experimental shorts constitute the most intriguing category, although there are only five or six of them (considering how you count). They include closeups of Gould’s own CD318 piano in action, hammers striking the soundboard, illustrating the physical geometry of the sonic construction; a scene of Gould playing the piano in x-ray vision; and “Gould Meets McLaren,” a 1969 animated short (originally entitled “Spheres”) that shows globes popping into existence, dancing symmetrically across the screen, and dividing like eggs undergoing musical mitosis as Gould plays a Bach fugue.

I once defined bopic as “a movie genre that’s not accurate enough to be documentary or interesting enough to be fiction.” One of the most formulaic and cliched film formats, the celebrity biography only really works when it is heavily fictionalized, as in Amadeus or Lisztomania (which, coincidentally, both involve classical musicians). Thirty Two Short Films shatters the mold of this generally insipid movie genre. There are enough talking head reminiscences to capture the spirit of the man, but not so many that it appears lazy. Girard solves the genre’s central problem—the fact that messy human lives rarely fit neatly into three act structures with unified themes—by ignoring narrative almost entirely. This collage portraiture method captures its subject more faithfully than a “realist” approach would. When we think back on people we know, we recall them as a collection of moments and characteristics; we don’t think of them as a contiguous life story. Glenn Gould was the piano prodigy and the hypochondriac and the man who went everywhere wrapped in a coat and gloves and scarf and the man who called up his friends late at night and talked their ears off and the virtuoso who developed a hatred for performing and the monster who put ketchup on his eggs and the genius and the possibly asexual hermit. He is at least thirty two separate stories, and this seemingly chaotic collection of vignettes creates a portrait of a real person far better than a tick-tock chronology or a forced storyline would. Plus, the music is, naturally, great, and what Gould himself likely would have wanted us to focus on; his passion shines through every segment, turning almost anyone into a classical music fan for at least 90 minutes. Glenn Gould is a strong contender for the greatest biopic ever made.

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould entered the Criterion Collection in June 2025 on 4K UHD and Blu-ray. Of course it is a new 4K director approved transfer. Of course it comes with a booklet (a nice fold out broadsheet with titles and scenes from the shorts on the other side) with an informative essay (from Michael Koresky.) Of course it has a director’s commentary (Girard is joined by co-writer Don McKellar). Other extras include a thirty minute conversation between Girard and fellow Canadian director Atom Egoyan, archival interviews with star Colm Feore and producer Niv Fichman, and a two part 1959 television portrait called “Glenn Gould: Off the Record” and “Glenn Gould: On the Record.”

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…because of the deadening uniformity of the genre, Girard’s film appears all the more miraculous in retrospect. From its rigorous and deliberately distancing structural gambit to its restless stylistic experimentations, Thirty Two Short Films proves that biopics needn’t color within the lines to effectively portray their subjects.”–Derek Smith, Slant (Blu-ray)

[(This movie was nominated for review, without further comment, by “Anonymous.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (The Criterion Collection) [4K UHD]

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (The Criterion Collection) [4K UHD]
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Capsules

CAPSULE: PALMS (1993)

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Ладони, AKA Ladoni

DIRECTED BY: Artour Aristakisyan

PLOT: A man tries to connect with his unborn son by seeing glimpses of him in the faces of people he meets in the slums of late-Soviet Moldova.

Still from Palms (1993)

COMMENTS: Palms is a pseudo-documentary black-and-white film shot single-handedly by Artour Aristakisyan over five years in Chisinau, Moldova. It is a haunting journey through faith, identity, and what it means to exist. When it was first screened in Moscow in the early 1990s, it blindsided everyone. Few people saw it, but those who did will never forget it. Even compared to other eccentric Russian films of Soviet parallel cinema or necrorealism, Palms is something else entirely. But unlike the ironic works of Yevgeny Yufit or Andrei I., Palms overflows with intense passion and austere ideology.

The film is composed of ten short stories about real people—beggars, psychiatric patients, oddballs, cripples, and others—who behave like “Bodies without Organs” (a concept from philosopher Gilles Deleuze). So, who are these people? There’s an unwashed woman who has supposedly lain on the ground for 40 years, waiting for Jesus. A boy who swore not to move until the Kingdom of Heaven arrives. An old woman who clings to the severed head of an SS officer—her lover—a clear nod to both Salome and Judith. A grandfather who collects trash from the dead, with “the border of Israel running across his face.” A man named Srulik, who kisses a dove—an allusion to the Holy Spirit.

Each kooky character, with their own tragic story, is woven into a cryptic narrative voiced by the filmmaker, who speaks as “the Father” addressing his “Unborn Son,” a child about to be aborted (an allusion to “the Logos” —Jesus before the Incarnation). The Father (voiced by Aristakisyan himself) is the only speaking character in the film. The central theme of his calm, solemn narration is a deep distrust of the material world, which is portrayed as inherently evil. Earth, in this worldview, is the creation of the Demiurge—a false god behind all societal systems. Although Aristakisyan claims he followed these drifters, outcasts, and madmen for five years and wrote down what they said, it’s clear that many of them are figments of his imagination.

Though the film seems disconnected from any specific cinematic tradition, Palms shares thematic affinities with early Christian thought, including Pauline theology and the Bogomil heresy. “Father Aristakisyan” proclaims:

“This is the System. It doesn’t have borders anymore. The System will find you wherever you go. So, kid, before it’s too late, focus on your salvation. You have your own light. Use it, and you’ll escape the System. For now, don’t get distracted by all this nonsense. No, don’t think about traveling abroad. After death, you’ll have plenty of time to travel. Your next baptism will be by fire. And then it’ll be too late to pick a side.”

To the Paulicians, everything on Earth was the work of Sataniel—the Demiurge, the god of the Old Testament. Jesus Christ, in contrast, was the Good God, made of “subtle” matter. They viewed Christ as a kind of phantom, not truly human—an idea known as docetism, associated with Serapion of Antioch. Aristakisyan’s concept of the System aligns with this Paulician worldview: not merely a political structure, but something much larger. It’s not socialism or capitalism, or even human society as such. The System is the entire material realm—factories, asylums, homes, and everything else.

Ironically, Aristakisyan (or his on-screen persona) even ridicules the vastness of outer space:

“I’m worried about you, kid. The sky used to be a protective ceiling—obviously made of foil. It kept me safe from the cosmos and all the crap in it. When I lived under the sky, maybe some of my thoughts didn’t come true. Now, every thought becomes real. It’s like cancer spreading everywhere, but a special kind of cancer. It keeps the body alive so the corpse can keep generating energy.”

In a nod to earlier critiques of modernity, the film hits the audience with an almost didactic intensity. Aristakisyan’s vision of the System is a heady mix of conspiracy theory and mystical philosophy, creating a spellbinding and unsettling atmosphere throughout. Thirty years later, the leading ideologist of Russian fascism, Alexander Dugin, would echo some of these themes: “The Outer Space exploration is godless and shameful. It’s a globalist fantasy preparing for the Antichrist. The Outer Space is an illusion. We need to stay faithful to Christ and the Russian land.”

The film recalls the small, priestless sects that emerged in 18th-century Russia, some of which still survive in remote regions like the Evenk taiga or the Trans-Volga steppes. One such group, the Golbeshniki, believed society itself was the kingdom of Lucifer. They buried themselves in mysterious earthen dens, burned their children in dark rites, and danced naked in the moonlight.

Despite its Paulician creed and somber tale, the film breathes of something far greater. The pallid and dappled hues that stain the frame, the wretched hovels of Chișinău, and the tranquil voice of the author together weave a spell most strange. A beauty not of this earth steals o’er the senses, ensnaring the soul in such wise that to look away becomes a sorrowful task indeed.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“[Palms’] approach certainly risks exploiting, aestheticising or exoticising human suffering. Instead, the film decontextualises its subjects without suggesting that the suffering it depicts is either unreal or picturesque. Rendering the historical as the trans-historical here functions to set extant reality into question.”–Hannah Proctor, ‘So-called waste’: Forms of Excess in Post-1960 Art, Film, and Literature’ (lecture)

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

CAPSULE: INVENTION (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: Courtney Stephens

FEATURING: , Sahm McGlynn, James N. Kienitz Wilkins

PLOT: Actress Callie Hernandez comes to terms with her eccentric father’s death, while portraying the character Carrie Fernandez who inherits her father’s patent for an “electromagnetic healing device.”

COMMENTS: Brought to our attention by a reader who noticed some uncanny similarities to Certified Weird curiosity  After Last Season, Invention tells a story of death and medical experimentation. Both films are low-budget explorations of weird science, but the comparison ends there—in Invention‘s favor, as the more coherent and watchable film (although After Last Season earns the award for weirdness).

In real life, actor-writer Hernandez is the daughter of Dr. John Hernandez, an alternative medical guru who hosted a program on local television. Six months after his death, Hernandez began collaborating with director Stephens on a script inspired by her mourning experiences. Actual footage from her father’s VHS archives made its way into the film. The story becomes a dual narrative about Hernandez and her fictional counterpart, “Carrie Fernandez,” the daughter of elusive “Dr. J.” When she unexpectedly inherits a patent discovers upon his death, she discovers her father secretly invented a “vibronic” machine.

Dr. J’s story is reminiscent of Wilhelm Reich, another traditionally educated medical professional whose career took a strange turn when he began developing outré theories (whom readers may recall from the Certified Weird film WR: Mysteries of the Organism). Dr. J’s device isn’t sexual, but Carrie finds out the FDA recalled it for its dubious medical value.

People of a certain age will remember seeing television personalities like Dr. J on public access, programs that were a bewildering mix of actual facts, bizarre theories, and advertising for various New Age products and therapies. I distinctly remember flipping past these types of shows on PBS back in the 1980s and ’90s (to a kid, they were incredibly boring). I can only imagine what it must have been like growing up with someone like Dr J for a father. Invention gives the viewer a pretty good idea, though the film mostly focuses on the absurdities of dealing with the loss of a parent in a death-phobic country like the United States.

Invention excels at black humor, maintaining a consistent tone of deadpan awkwardness as Callie/Carrie endures stilted conversations with funeral parlor staff and estate executors, while navigating the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of corporate bereavement policies. As Callie encounters the various people connected to her father’s mysterious machine, she tries to learn more about it, but conflicting stories emerge. Some of Dr J’s friends and patients remain convinced of his misunderstood genius; others politely refrain from calling him a crackpot to his grieving daughter.

Brief scenes of intensely colored video and animation emphasize Carrie’s descent into this psychedelically-tinged world of alternative medicine, as does a tea party in an “Alice in Wonderland”-themed corn maze. The intertwined narratives of Callie and Carrie, united by archival television footage, blur the boundaries between fiction and reality, as Dr. Hernandez essentially plays himself in both. But aside from the animated sequences, the film’s style remains realist. It hovers at the edge of the rabbit hole without ever tumbling in.

Many viewers will probably leave this film wanting to know more about the mysterious machine, but it remains cryptic. A series of cathode-ray tubes connected by a ring of coiled wire and staged in a red-walled room, it looks suitably science-fictional, and its main champions are a little too “woo” to be believed. Callie references Nikola Tesla’s theories when trying to defend to father’s vision, but she doesn’t seem entirely convinced. Even after she begins using the machine, she never reveals whatever effect it may or may not be having on her.

Hernandez looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t remember what else I had seen her in—probably because she was buried under layers of mascara in Under the Silver Lake (as Millicent Sevence, another daughter in mourning for her eccentric father). She also co-starred in Benson and Moorhead’s The Endless. Which is  to say, Hernandez has some fledgling weird credentials. Courtney Stephens has been assistant director on a number of pictures. I’ll be curious to see how both their careers develop. Invention has weird potential; perhaps someday we’ll see something full blown weird from its creators.

Invention is currently playing in limited cities across North America, with a wider release planned for Summer 2025.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This strange, personal movie is a mind meld between the experimental filmmaker Courtney Stephens (‘Terra Femme’) and the actress Callie Hernandez (‘Alien: Covenant’)… ‘Invention’ is committed to finding its own wavelength.”–Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Morgan, who suggested “If After Last Season left an impact on anyone, it would probably have to be Courtney Stephens and her film Invention from 2024. The trailer is a pretty strong homage: minimalist keyboard music, cardboard in the background, CGI dreams, questions that go nowhere, and shot on film.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

 

 

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, Shorts

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE HANDS OF GOD (2003)

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DIRECTED BY: Alyson Levy

PLOT: Participants at the 9th Annual International Festival of Christian Puppetry and Ventriloquism in Kankakee, Illinois explain the role of puppets in their evangelism and their faith.

Still from The Hands of God (2005)

COMMENTS: I will never forget the jaw-dropping moment some years back when a late evening spin ‘round the dial landed me on public access television just in time for one of the most bizarre sights that had ever flickered across my retinas. It was a green space alien puppet singing in a warbling baritone about the power of Jesus, while random intro-level chroma-key wipes revealed an assortment of inanimate puppets waiting for their turn in the spotlight alongside the barely animate human hosts staring blankly into the distance. I had stumbled upon Mr. Grey Spaceman, one of the stars of the legendary “Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Hour,” a kind of kids’ show for kids who had been raised in a cave and then fed quaaludes before being plopped in front of the TV set. The inexplicable mind behind this entertainment (that ran for over two decades) was David Liebe Hart, who built and operated all the puppets in the show, using the same voice for all of them and singing in unthinkable lugubrious tones. Hart’s was a talent so singular that Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim invited him onto their “Awesome Show” to just be himself.

There is nothing quite as weird as Hart’s material in The Hands of God. (There is probably nothing as weird as Hart’s material in the world.) But there’s a spirit that runs through the “Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Hour” that is present here, an earnestness to spread the word of the Gospel and an innate certainty that the best way to do so is through sub-Henson puppetry. The Lord works in mysterious ways, and this is certainly among the most impenetrable of His mysteries.

Director Levy is part of the PFFR collective, the folks responsible for the outrageous children’s-TV parody “Wonder Showzen” as well as the scripts for the twisted anthology Final Flesh. So it’s natural to assume that her goal is to exploit these guileless rubes for all they’re worth. And that may be, but having arrived at this week-long gathering of devout felt, she clearly realized that nothing she did could be more remarkable than what these performers were willing to do themselves. Aside from pointing the camera at the stage, Levy is careful to let the action speak for itself.

One of the things the action says very loudly is that the message is vastly more important than the medium. The puppeteers are uniformly terrible performers, so dedicated to reminding us that Jesus died for our sins that they never come within a country mile of the rhythm or wit we expect from a comedic sketch. One puppet duo consists of an old man in overalls and a primly dressed little girl, but the characters are irrelevant because they’re only here to trade Christian aphorisms that they already know, echoing the way they themselves are performing for an audience that has already been converted to the Good Word. When there is a message, it’s usually a reminder of the flawed world we all share. One puppet troupe dances in front of signs reading “Oprah No” and “Jesus Yes.” Four puppets wrapped in keffiyehs slam into each other in an orgy of Muppety violence until they are thrust apart by the arrival of a puppet Jesus. Most cringe-inducing is the sweet-looking woman whose hippie-girl puppet Yolanda is just back from Mexico, where she “never knew it would be so poor.” Certainly they mean well, but absolutely no one is concerned how they will come across. The Lord is on their side.

An interesting storyline in The Hands of God is the connection between the puppeteers and their puppets. In interview segments, when the subjects are explaining their understanding of the functionality of faith, the humans frequently turn to seek approval from the very figures they are controlling. The puppets authentically become independent personalities, separate in character but fully aligned in mindset. Perhaps the most insightful moment comes during the closing credits, when the interviewees attempt to answer the question of whether there are puppets in heaven. For the first time in the picture, there is a schism in the dogma, as the absolutists who reject any physical manifestation in the Great Beyond run up against those who are clearly heartbroken at the mere thought of being without their companions for eternity.

The Hands of God is proof that weirdness is in the eye of the beholder, as the behavior of these righteous performers can be interpreted as either wildly psychotic or charmingly quirky. But like their spiritual ancestor David Liebe Hart, no one here is doing a bit. Levy’s short documentary is a fascinating look at a group of people for whom touching the face of God is as easy as talking to the hand.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Creepy looking Christians in all weird shapes and sizes. None of these people really look normal.,,, This was pretty damn funny — but insanely scary as well.”–Claire CJS, Clint’s Blog

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

Depraved Puppetry: Is There Any Good News in Dark Humor? – A perspective from a Christian who’s also a fan of PFFR

(This movie was nominated for review by Brad. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)