Customer Reviews

Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an absolutely incredible film.

It's an intimate look at the creative process and creative collaboration--and that includes the lively interaction between the filmmaker and his subjects, among whom are some of the most accomplished people in contemporary art and cinema.

It is also a visually gorgeous, beautifully edited film that includes among its subjects several Glass theatre pieces which are stunningly beautiful.

Best of all, Philip Glass turns out to be a wonderfully warm-hearted, endearing human being who has led, and continues to lead, a life that fully embraces all of life's possibilities--at the age of 70.

Saw this amazing doco last night. Its an incisive two hour window into how one of the most iconic composers does his thriving. Some key insights:
1. If you are not upsetting someone then you're not doing your craft - Craft is about letting your uniqueness come through ;
2. Its not about contribution (though, of course, you really do);
3. The craft speaks to something that really enrichs his life
If you only use trued and true tools and techniques then thats all you will produce ;
4. "Big things" emerge - its like being under ground and hearing an underground river somewhere. Instead of directly looking for it, you do your routines and you sink in the time - the river finds you and takes you where it is going - you are the vehicle and it (for Philip the new music) was always there ;
5. It is your life - have a portfolio of activities that craddle your uniqueness - for him this is various moving meditations and exercises with different masters, family life, being a New Yorker - doing the evryday stuff and routines - With the portfolio of mediations/exercise/spiritual practices, you look for new practices that fill in gaps or open new possibilities ;
6. It is your life - surround yourself with a network of gifted very different individuals, and have regular quality time with them
7. It is your life - shape the quality of it by the environments you inhabit and move between - for him its the buzz and life of NYC, coupled to the farm wilderness type enviornment he and Holly have on the Nova Scotia coast;
8. Learn and evolve from lots of very different teachers - from the harsh formal piano mistress in Paris to the loving approach used by Ravi Shankar
When you do your craft you just make the quality time, be there, support yourself with the habits and it comes. Have lots of projects on the go at any one time
9. The craft is "communicating" - for him its through music, painters its their art - the key is how to ingest this - for music being great at "listening", visual arts through "seeing". Passive - active going on here
10. It is your life - Moving between the Nova Scotia coast and NYC environments and live "young" - His much younger wife Holly, and family life with kids under 5 - he turned seventy in 2005 but appears to live with the energy and drive of someone half his age

Oh, and yes, there is his music and projects sprinkled throughout it that really add to the tone and meaning of it...

From the excellent and critically minded reviews of this DVD, I would say that when mine arrives I am in for a geniune treat. I have studied the music and personality of Glass over the years, observed the impact of his music on my college-age students, and relished his soundtracks in recent film releases. From humble beginnings Glass emerges as one of America's prime exponents of minimalism, a late 20th century musical trend that is still fireing the minds of musicians everywhere.

DVD arrived, viewed the entire presentation. Wonderful mix of Glass's music and biographical scenes of him over an 18 month period, along with historic footage of his music-making and family situations. A complicated man whose music rises above traditional fare. You won't be disappointed in this DVD investment.

This is the documentary that recently aired
on the PBS series American Masters. This is
a terrific insight to the mind of such a
brilliant and multi-faceted person. Not only
does Glass come off as intriguing, but
self-effacing and humble. You will learn
about his background in music as well
as his upbringing, family, and spiritual
pursuits. The interviews are candid and
witty. As a composer myself I found this
very inspiring, but one does not need
to be a musician to appreciate. For those
that have seen the doc on PBS already it's
still worth it with all the bonus footage
on the second disc. You get about an
hour and a half of the leftover interviews
and about the same in live performances.

A must have for Glass fans!

I feel I've just spent a year with Glass (the biopic covers a year) and I've fallen in love with his life. I want to be him! I want his gifts of music and hard work, his friends (who obviously love him), his kids, his summer house, and I long to watch him make pizza from scratch while talking about composition and then -- eat as much as I can hold. What a LIKABLE man (even his siblings like him). I've always appreciated his music--it's like English grammar, subject, subject, verb, object. It's one of those films you live inside as you're watching it--I recommend it.

I don't quite know how, but Scott Hicks has made Philip Glass look boring. He spent many months with the composer, gaining exclusive access to his professional and personal life, and yet rarely manages to penetrate beyond the surface to find out what makes the man tick. The film starts off with a long and rather tedious anecdote told by an old friend about the olden days when Glass and co were really shaking up the staid world of music in the 1960s. We then flit from here to there and in the process we see far too much of Glass pottering around in his Nova Scotia cottage cooking and generally interacting with friends and family. So what? We want to learn something deeper about the man. Glass talks (or rather, he mumbles, which is another problem with the film) about himself and is occasionally insightful. He clearly lives for his music and everyone and everything comes a distant second. At the end of the two hours you ask "Is that really it?" We barely see him perform. The most personal part of the film comes when his fourth wife Holly almost breaks down in front of the camera, admitting that while the marriage worked for a while, the two of them are now drifting apart. It comes as no surprise to learn that they have separated (this is not mentioned in the film). Although I'm perhaps being unfair to suggest that Hicks had a chance of unlocking the soul of a very complicated man, I think he could have asked some more pressing questions.

I will start off by saying that I'm a huge Philip Glass fan- I've been to over 50 Glass concerts of all types since 1988 and have an extensive collection of Glass memorabilia as well. I've had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Glass on several occasions.

This movie is essential viewing for anyone interested in music and creativity. Mr. Glass is a genius; a music "machine" who is incredibly prolific and obsessed with music composition. He's a human being too, as the film vividly illustrates. He is simply an amazing man yet struggles with the demands of life as all of us do, as the ending of the film makes clear.

Scott Hicks, who has directed the films "Shine" and "No Reservations" among others, is a fan of Mr. Glass and followed Mr. Glass around the world for approximately two years as he worked on composing his Symphony No. 8, toured his work for the Philip Glass Ensemble and world musicians called "Orion", and premiered his opera "Waiting for the Barbarians" in Erfurt, Germany.

There is simply so much in this movie that I can't go into all of it here. I first saw the movie at the Sarasota Film Festival and it was shown on PBS TV as part of the "American Masters" series in April of this year.

Even if you don't like Glass's music, this movie will carry you along for an exploration into an incredible artist. This movie is just like Glass's music- multi-dimensional, out of the ordinary, beautiful, humorous, spiritual, and haunting. The cinematography is also superior to ordinary documentaries. It's fast paced and could have easily been much longer. Also includes a second DVD which includes outtakes, extended interviews with Glass, performance clips from the incredible work "Orion", and Glass performing "Metamporphosis" on piano in concert. A remarkable portrait of the greatest living composer!

I looked forward to watching this movie because I love Philip Glass's music and I was hoping for something along the lines of 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould. I was disappointed to find that this was just a soap opera posing as a documentary, dominated by details about Glass's deteriorating relationship with his trophy wife -- although it is more likely that he was the glamorous trophy spouse for a shallow and conventional woman who obviously did not understand him. Or perhaps it was just the filmmakers' own bias that made the wife so unsympathetic. In any case, I actually lost a lot of respect for Glass as a result of this film. Not recommended.

There are two major documentaries out on Philip Glass that I have seen. One, this one, and another one that was released on DVD a couple of years or so before this one.

The previous documentary was interesting in its own right but I felt it focused too heavily on actual performances, the actual music and very little on Glass as a person. Those who have a deep affinity for Glass' music were likely to already know most of the info and insights seen on that documentary; I know it provided very little insight or new material for me having followed Glass and his music for some time. After I had seen that older documentary I was left wondering if we would ever truly see into Glass as a person and as a human being. I wondered that until this film was released.

"Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts" went well into everything about Glass as I had hoped. As an artistic-minded person myself and one who has obsessed over Glass' music for the majority of my life I had longed to truly see what there was to Glass himself beyond the notes on the page. Just seeing the trailer for this film was a treat and I waited very impatiently for its release and it was worth every moment of the wait.

This documentary gave us so many looks at Glass both figuratively and literally and I never wanted the film to end. From his children and his wife (and previous ones), to his home(s), to his traveling for performances, to his meeting of friends and other artists, to his going over scores with Davies combined with segments showing his everyday life and looking at his approach and the processes of his composing made for a fabulous, satisfying film. What you end up with is a whole portrait of the composer from both the personal and artistic points of view.

The only surprise to me as far as something not included in this film was more about the PGE (Philip Glass Ensemble) and hearing from it's members. However, this is something the other documentary covers a little more in-depth than this one, and this is about Glass after all (not the ensemble) so we don't get much more than a few obligatory mentions of them in this film. Other than that it far surpassed anything I thought would ever be seen of Glass as a person.

The surprise that came to me upon seeing the film was my expectations of 'who' Glass would be. Growing up as a kind of dark, angst-ridden, artsy, music-majoring teen myself who first felt a connection to his music when I heard Glass for the first time ('Koyaanisqatsi'), I have always expected him to be a darker, intense, avant-garde minded, hardened, semi-cynical person based on what I heard in his early works. While he is no less intense or creative than I imagined, if you are expecting what I was I think you will be in for a surprise. And while I now see the reality of who Glass is rather than what I had always expected, I think of him and his music no less than I did before-and that is the beauty of this film, of Glass and of his amazing music.

I like Philip Glass. I like his music, and I like him as a person. I've actually met him, and he seems genuinely approachable and down-to-earth. However, this documentary just isn't worth watching, even if you are a devotee of Mr. Glass's work. You see Philip chatting with friends, Philip cooking, Philip with his kids. You meet his family. Et cetera, et cetera. There was a German TV documentary made about Philip Glass a few years ago that was more watchable than this film, because it was less ambitious; you saw Philip at home and Philip at work, and the whole thing lasted about an hour. At roughly two hours, this film is just complete 'overkill'. Mr. Glass is one of the most successful composers of the 20th/21st century, but his daily routine is not signficiantly more eventful than the lot of the typical New York intellectual/professional artist. Even Glass's occasional comments on art and the artistic process seem ploddingly pedestrian, though it must be admitted that he is generally distracted when he makes these comments; he's watching the kids, or the food, or whatever. Admittedly, it must be an exhausting experience to have someone follow you around for days with a movie camera, capturing your every move. I've seen interviews in which Philip Glass provides some remarkable insight into the world of art and the role of the artist in society. Here, the anecdotes get mixed in with the usual flotsam of daily life, and frankly, it's not enough to sustain viewer interest across two whole hours.