Looking at a life: Biography on film

Abstract

Two contemporary biographical films, Crumb and Thirty‐Two Short Films About Glenn Gould suggest new possibilities for reconceiving the genre of biography in a post‐literate society, revealing how visual media may enhance scholarship and storytelling in biography and history alike. In Crumb, director Terry Zwigoff tries to sustain a rigid narrative that tells a rather predictable story about the life of cartoonist R. Crumb. However, even as Zwigoff works to replicate the apparently seamless narrative of a written history, his camera records evidence that subverts it. Consequently, he allows viewers to raise questions about the ‘truth’ of his account and to construct alternate scenarios of Crumb's life. With Thirty‐Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, director François Girard explodes the biographical genre by abandoning a single, linear narrative in favor of thirty‐two vignettes, and by intermingling documentary and fictive film‐making. These cinematic techniques are motivated by Glenn Gould's philosophical objection to distinctions between active artists and passive audiences. Acting on Gould's hope that audiences might participate in the creative process, Girard invites his viewers to construct their versions of the pianist's life by interpreting the fragmented information that the director provides. Although treating very different kinds of subjects, Crumb and Thirty‐Two Short Films About Glenn Gould underscore the uncertainty and imagination that are a necessary part of biography. Furthermore, these films suggest that we must abandon the traditional notion that the only proper way to represent history is through writing; writing is only one possibility on a spectrum of ways to represent the past.