Bits and pieces of "Glass" shine

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Philip Glass."

In Scott Hicks' documentary "Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts," a friend of the famed minimalist composer repeats this joke, laughing — he sees the point of it. And Glass, who emerges in this meandering film as a likable though intense fellow, no doubt does, too. If you don't like his music, he says cheerfully, "listen to something else. You have my blessing."

In the film, Hicks (director of "Shine" and, more recently, "No Reservations") follows Glass through a year in the composer's life: An opera ("Waiting for the Barbarians") is premiered, a symphony written, a few films scored, a young family raised. (Glass, now in his 70s, has two small children with his fourth wife.)

Hicks structures "Glass" in 12 vignettes, each highlighting a different aspect of Glass' life, and some are more compelling than others. A long sequence in which Glass prepares pizza for his family at their vacation home reveals little, other than that famous composers prepare dinner pretty much the same way anybody else does. The thrill of finding out that Glass has the same cutting board I have is, well, thin at best.

Far more interesting are the segments on Glass at work. Several of the film directors he's worked with — Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Errol Morris, Godfrey Reggio — comment insightfully on the hypnotic effect of Glass' layered, repetitive yet often insistently lovely music. "Philip does existential dread better than anyone," notes Morris (for whom Glass scored "The Thin Blue Line," among others). Reggio, director of "Koyaanisqatsi," talks of grounding his films in "the emotive armchair of an original composition."

And Glass, though clearly a busy man (he at one point picks up a ringing cellphone, smiles, and pointedly ignores it — "someone from Hollywood"), finds time to muse on-camera about his own creative process. In a segment titled "The Foggy Field," he talks about the act of composing. "For me, writing music is listening to it," he says. "I don't think of it, I listen to it. It's already there."

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725

or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com