Two short National Film Board of Canada documentaries follow pianist Glenn Gould during the 1955 recording sessions for Bach's Goldberg Variations, the album that made his career. "On the Record" stays inside the studio, watching Gould hum audibly over his own playing, argue with producers about takes, and obsess over microphone placement and piano action until a passage sounds exactly as he hears it in his head. "Off the Record" follows him outside the booth, driving through the Ontario countryside, soaking his hands in hot water before he'll touch a keyboard, and talking through the isolation and discipline that shaped his playing. Neither film uses narration to explain him; the camera simply stays close while Gould talks, hums, and works, letting his mannerisms (the low chair, the constant vocalizing, the compulsive perfectionism) speak for themselves. Made a decade before Gould abandoned live concerts entirely to record in private, the two films catch him at the point where that retreat from the stage was just beginning to take shape.