Gould Meets Gould: Seamless Realism

The short film Gould Meets Gould is an example of seamless realism. This short film opens with a black screen and white letters showing the film’s title, Gould Meets Gould. It is literally about Glenn Gould, who argues with himself about the roles of artist and audience. Gould Meets Gould is a film written by Gould in which he interviews himself. Since seamless realism tries to disguise the illusion of realism, this film is an excellent example of the form. In the film, Gould is interviewing himself, but the film makes it look as if he is interviewing another person. Both characters are very expressive in their conversation with each other. The dialogue is such that without close examination, it would be easy to imagine a real interview …show more content…
The interviewer, who is also Gould, sits in the center of the floor in a shadow area that does not cast light upon his face, therefore basically disguising his appearance. The film creates a mystery of an atmosphere so that the two characters are not actually identified, and the spectator continues to listen to the dialogue because it is the more important part of the short film. The maker of the film did a great job with using a narrative that was captivating enough to make the spectator stop thinking about who the conservationist were, but caused a focus on the conversation itself. The speakers were kept in the dark with only a slight visual of who, they were, and enough light to see when they repositioned themselves. For example, when the interviewee moved from behind the object that partially concealed him to another position as he spoke; the interviewer eventually had to turn around, still in the shadow, and continued the interviewing and replying to the responses. I do not feel this short film was formalism because, according to the definition of formalism the short film’s focus would have been on the formal or technical elements of the film, which would have been the lighting, sound, set design and color. Although there was music playing throughout the film that was not its main focus neither, was the lighting or the set design, and certainly not color, because the film was in black and