Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

Leonard Cohen is a songwriters' songwriter, like Townes van Zandt, about whom a documentary film appeared last year. The subject of this new one, produced by Lion's Gate Television and now in limited US release in theaters – is famous here and in Europe and an icon in Canada and still vital today, in his early seventies, after a very long career -- though younger mainstream pop fans may be unfamiliar with his name. A Jew from Montreal, the son of a successful haberdasher who died when he was nine but left him money to live on, Cohen means a lot to people who write songs or who've cared about lyrics from the Sixties when John Hammond discovered him and the Seventies when Robert Altman used his songs in McCabe and Mrs. Miller and on into the present day, when he has returned to perform after an absence of over a decade, partly due to financial need. But you won't get all this information from this documentary. Nor will this be the ideal introduction to the man and his work.

The film cuts into music with talking heads in the manner of such films and is mainly an editing together of a concert honoring Cohen featuring Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, Beth Orton, Jarvis Cocker, and others with a long interview of Cohen at his home in L.A. interspersed with old footage of the man's life. Some overly pointed tricks with stills and overlays of red blobs are a distracting element in what otherwise is technically unimpressive film-making. The impression that emerges is that Cohen interviewed intercut with texts of his poems and himself singing would make a fine and intelligent film. Concerts by admirers would be another, lesser, film. Combining the two elements diminishes both and results in a film that seems slapped together.

At the end as a kind of surprise Cohen himself sings a song backed up by Bono and the Edge, who've sung his praises in words earlier. However this performance is unremarkable and not a climactic finale.

Cohen in his interview amid many wise and pithy remarks provides us with a tantalizingly sketchy narrative of what sounds like a fascinating life: we find out that he grew up in Montreal and was active with a group of poets there; has lived on the island of Hydra and in the Chelsea Hotel and made love to Janis Joplin and wrote a song about her; has a reputation as a ladies man but has spent "ten thousand nights alone"; has been ordained as a Zen monk and lived in a monastery on Mount Baldy; learned early the virtues of modesty and despair and the acceptance of failure as inevitable. We would like to learn more.

Respect is clearly due a writer-musician of such originality and intelligence, but apart from the uneasy linkage of interview and songs, the concert clips covered in this film might have been better if the performances had been more straightforward and less worshipful. The songs are made into anthems and the most essential element, the words, gets muddled. I'm pleased to be introduced to Rufus Wainwright, whose voice and personality are irresistible, and who's a Montrealer too. Nick Cave, whom some see as a kind of heir to Cohen as a complex lyricist, isn't half bad either in singing Cohen's songs, in a second-tier cabaret singer sort of way; his performance of Cohen's most famous song, "Susanne,"which even I immediately recognized, is not unworthy. And this is one place where the interview and the concert come together effectively, since Cohen comments on the song's actual origins just before the performance is shown.

There ought to have been more of the flat tuneless singing of Leonard Cohen himself, which is probably the best way to experience his lyrics, without too much musical embroidery. Is it that unlike Townes Van Zandt's, Cohen's Sixties and Seventies performances are unfilmed? The other speakers about the man are as worshipful as the concertizers. They go so overboard in praising him that they could be talking about Socrates or Jesus. Bono is an eloquent speaker, but not a precise one.

This overblown praise is curiously inappropriate for someone as modest and ironic as Cohen -- and so well able to speak for himself. When songwriters are also poets or wits, like Bob Dylan or Tom Lehrer or Cohen, they don't need tuneful voices but what they do need is clarity of diction -- which they have, and the men in the concert, Jarvis Cocker, Nick Cave, Wainwright, have, but the women performers, including Wainwright's own sister, tend to lack. The ideal audience for this film is one that can approach it already armed with worshipful reverence. If you know noting about Leonard Cohen, the place to start would be not here, but with his own recordings, moving on to the more detailed bios available online and then perhaps (though I haven't been there) to his published writings, which include both poems and novels. Only after acquiring a thorough familiarity with Cohen's writing and singing would one want to hear elaborate covers of his songs.

Some viewers of this film find Antony's performance of "If It Be Your Will" awesome and deeply moving. I found it awkward, peculiar, and embarrassing. Not for the first time in the film, egocentric hamming overpowered the simple power of the song. And ironically, when the performances most excelled musically, they seemed to lose touch with the Leonard Cohen flavor of the songs.

The director, Lian Lunson, is a woman from Australia who's a good friend of Bono and who has done a film about Willie Nelson – and has the dubious honor of having composed the music for The Passion of the Christ. She has said Mel Gibson is a big fan of both Cohen and Nick Cave, and helped her get the film produced by Lion's Gate.

First of all, this documentary focuses on a concert that was a tribute to Leonard Cohen, an artist and a poet that has been influential to countless others. This Sydney concert gathered a lot of talent that came together to celebrate his music. Lian Lunson, an Australian director, has taken the best tracks of the historical presentation that mixes well with the man it's paying homage to. Let the viewer be clear that for a better picture of who this man is and what he has done in his life, it will not be found in this movie. For that, anyone interested in Cohen's life must go somewhere else because of the limitations this medium had.

The life of Leonard Cohen is examined briefly as an on camera interview with him at his Los Angeles home. Several biographical bits of information are revealed during that conversation, but of course, it only covers the highlights of his life in sketchy details. One gets to know, for instance, about his early life in Montreal. The death of the father when Cohen was nine. His New York stay, at the legendary Chelsea Hotel, home of the cool people that influenced a whole generation. Then one learns about Mr. Cohen's introduction to Zen Buddism and his becoming a monk.

A curious note arises from the lips of Leonard Cohen's lips about being a notorious ladies' man, something he was always notorious for, and yet, how far from the truth it was. There is also a moment in which the poet reads for our benefit the introduction he prepared for one of his books being translated into Chinese, a culture that always fascinated him.

The concert itself is an excellent way to hear Leonard Cohen's songs as others interpret them. Rufus Wainwright sings three numbers to great effect. Antony makes a poignant appearance belting "If It Be Your Will", all tics and mannerisms, yet making the song seem new. Nick Cave has also two good moments interpreting "I'm Your Man", and "Suzanne", two of the songs closely associated with Mr. Cohen. Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen who back up most of the songs, are perfect in "Anthem". Martha Wainwright's take on "The Traitor" has a different edge when she sings it, yet it's one of the highlights of the evening.

The best is left for last. Bono, and Edge, who have been praising Mr. Cohen throughout the film come together to back him as he sings his "Tower of Song" in his own inimitable style. It shows a lot of generosity on his part leaving his own material to be reexamined by a younger generation that clearly loves him.

Lian Lunson shows she had the right idea in how to bring the concert into a movie that gives relevance to a man that had it all, Leonard Cohen.

I was completely mesmerized by the performances in "Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man" and really liked the juxtaposition of his voice talking with other voices singing his songs. I saw the movie at the Sundance Film Festival and fell in love with his songs all over again. I thought that hearing about his life through his words and commentary was totally absorbing and I enjoyed every minute of it. On another level it also introduced me to artists that I didn't know that well or at all. I am now a huge fan of Rufus Wainwright's who is a perfect person to sing Leonard Cohen's songs. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and recommend this movie 100%!

Leonard Cohen is a master and this documentary is a fitting tribute to a legend. The audience at the Film Forum in New York sat in awed silence while the music washed though us and the lyrics cleansed our souls. Sometimes, the words cut painfully close to the bone, reminding us of our shared experience of being human.

Leonard Cohen goes to places most of us are unwilling to look at and brings back truth that no one can deny. Bono accurately describes it as going into the abyss and laughing at it. The artists performing his songs follow him there and brilliantly express the depth of his poetry set to music.

This is an outstanding film, documenting the poetic voice of our generation, and surely of many generations to come.

This was a frustrating experience to sit through. Part concert film, part biography with historical footage & photos, part present day interview, these various strands seem to be struggling with each other. This was filmed primarily at a series of Leonard Cohen tribute performances organized by producer Hal Willner in Sydney, Australia during January 2005 under the banner of "Came So Far For Beauty". Many of the same artists had also performed similar concerts during 2004 in New York City and the UK. Interview clips with Leonard Cohen at his home in LA along with some archival photos and film footage are interspersed into the concert scenes.

The flow of this wasn't always very satisfying and there was one aspect that began to get more irritating the longer the film went on. The filmmakers begin sabotaging their own concert artists by editing/interjecting an occasional red sparkle/red sequin image over their performances, which you gradually realize is a foreshadowing of Leonard Cohen's own performance with U2 (filmed at a totally separate non-concert staged studio setting) to come at the very end of the film. It is like they're constantly saying: "Don't worry if you don't like this particular performance, Leonard Cohen himself is yet to come!". What kind of message is that to send in the middle of your film with other performers? Some songs are even interrupted in mid-performance by historical or interview footage and then when Leonard Cohen is telling some good anecdote we go back to another cheat sheet performance (many of the singers don't seem to know the lyrics, so their eyes and eyelids constantly have a downcast/lidded look as they look to their music stands for the words). Still, there are some terrific performances here by Rufus Wainwright (on "Everybody Knows", "Chelsea Hotel #2" & "Hallelujah") Martha Wainwright (on "The Traitor") Beth Orton & Jarvis Cocker (duet on "Death of a Ladies' Man) and former Leonard Cohen band alumni Perla Battala & Julie Christensen (they also lend terrific support for most of the other singers) on "Anthem" and with the greatest revelation being the single monikered Antony (actually Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons) giving a show-stealing rendition of "If It Be Your Will".

Leonard Cohen's & U2's seemingly mimed/lip-synced performance of "Tower of Song" comes as a big let down at the end. Even more frustratingly, the main concert's rehearsal clips show the rest of the singers rehearsing a group finale, which, after a search on the internet (see http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/hw-sydney.html), I found out was the Sydney show's closing number "Memories" ("I walked up to the tallest and the blondest girl, I said, look, you don't know me now, but pretty soon you will, So won't you let me see, won't you let me see, won't you let me see…, your naked body.") which would have made for a much more humorous and rollicking finale but is sadly not to be seen in the film. A great opportunity lost but perhaps still a future possibility for a DVD down the road. Still, Leonard Cohen tells some great stories and Rufus Wainwright gets to tell his own personal "Leonard Cohen moment" story and Nick Cave gets to talk about his discovery of "Songs of Love and Hate", but I would rather have had a pure concert film or a pure interview/biography (or better yet, both separately!) rather than this hybrid which doesn't satisfy either craving completely. The good moments rescue this enough to bring it up to a 7 out of 10.