'Portrait' gets inside world of Philip Glass

The documentary shows composer Philip Glass (top) with son Marlowe, and (above) in Nova Scotia. (PHOTOS BY SCOTT HICKS/KOCH LORBER FILMS)

How many contemporary classical composers could you pick out of a lineup? For most people, quite possibly, just this one. Philip Glass's celebrity, like his ever-undulating music, is a unique phenomenon in a field often consigned to the cultural periphery. Insiders often lament that even those who follow the latest trends in the visual arts and literature frequently take a pass when it comes to contemporary art music. But everyone knows Philip Glass.

That's partly because Glass churns out music at an amazingly, suspiciously, bewilderingly fast pace: film scores, operas, symphonies, and chamber music. The question of how - or more deeply, why - he does it is not answered, but his story is sympathetically framed in an enjoyable yet at times frustrating feature-length documentary by Scott Hicks called "Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts," which opens today at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Glass, now 71, granted Hicks loads of access to his personal and professional worlds, and the result is a surprisingly close-up portrait of a man typically heard much more than seen. The camera is there as Glass composes in a T-shirt in his cluttered New York studio, as he makes pizza in his rural retreat in Nova Scotia (friends call it "Philville") while musing about the creative process, as he practices qigong and speaks with his Buddhist spiritual advisor, and as he attends rehearsals for the premiere of his Eighth Symphony. The film's pacing and structure have a meandering, impressionistic feel but also a calm focus that seems to mirror Glass's approach to the world.

There is plenty of domestic footage with Glass's two young children from his fourth wife, Holly Critchlow, but all is not bliss on the home front. In one moment of startling candor, Holly confesses to the strain of being married to a man who is married to his music. "I think for Philip, music is his therapy, his conversation, his place to be when he can't talk about what it is he's feeling," she says with palpable melancholy.

Glass's work in film is often ignored by critics but here it gets some welcome attention. The composer describes writing for the screen as an art, a craft, and a science all in one: "That psychological distance between the image and the music is both subjective and precise," he says. There are enjoyable cameos from Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and Errol Morris, who quips that "Philip does existential dread better than anybody."

But when it comes to helping viewers understand Glass's actual musical achievement, his strengths and shortcomings, and the broader cultural context of American minimalism, this film is woefully inadequate. Glass himself offers some interesting reflections on his two most influential teachers - Nadia Boulanger, the legendary Parisian pedagogue who taught Aaron Copland and so many other American composers, and Ravi Shankar, whose music Glass was transcribing when he had an early creative breakthrough. But beyond that, there is virtually nothing of substance on Glass's body of work. Hicks doesn't seem to have the interest or the patience to dig into the music as such. There is no discussion of his landmark "Music in Twelve Parts," off of which the film's title riffs, nor of the seminal operas "Satyagraha" or "Akhnaten." Some time is devoted to "Einstein on the Beach" but Hicks favors colorful anecdotes over anything that might help viewers understand just what all the fuss was about.

The lack of a credible external perspective beyond the narrative provided by Glass, his friends, family, and associates, makes the film feel too cozy. No criticisms of Glass, his evolution, or his choices are seriously aired. At one point Glass mentions his work on the score for an Imax film about the planet Mars. Why at this point in his career he is taking on these kinds of projects is a mystery. All the more so because no one here presses him on that question.

That said, a thoughtful moment comes near the end of the film as the screen goes dark, focusing attention on Glass's voice alone. He speaks of an author friend who describes writing as "the antidote to the chaos of the world around him." Glass tells us this friend lives almost entirely in the world of his mind. "It's all real," the composer explains, "it's just what you choose to establish as the core of your being. He makes the core of his life an act of imagination." Glass then wonders: "Is it escape or is it liberation?" He says he has no idea, and you believe him. You also appreciate his humility. If only someone would save him from his own ubiquity.