$thing

The saddest thing about this "tribute" is that almost all the singers (including the otherwise incredibly talented Nick Cave) seem to have missed the whole point where Cohen's intensity lies: by delivering his lines in an almost tuneless poise, Cohen transmits the full extent of his poetry, his irony, his all-round humanity, laughter and tears in one.

To see some of these singer upstarts make convoluted suffering faces, launch their pathetic squeals in the patent effort to scream "I'm a singer!," is a true pain. It's the same feeling many of you probably had listening in to some horrendous operatic versions of simple songs such as Lennon's "Imagine." Nothing, simply nothing gets close to the simplicity and directness of the original. If there is a form of art that doesn't need embellishments, it's Cohen's art. Embellishments cast it in the street looking like the tasteless make-up of sex for sale.

In this Cohen's tribute I found myself suffering and suffering through pitiful tributes and awful reinterpretations, all of them entirely lacking the original irony of the master and, if truth be told, several of these singers sounded as if they had been recruited at some asylum talent show. It's Cohen doing a tribute to them by letting them sing his material, really, not the other way around: they may have been friends, or his daughter's, he could have become very tender-hearted and in the mood for a gift. Too bad it didn't stay in the family.

Fortunately, but only at the very end, Cohen himself performed his majestic "Tower of Song," but even that flower was spoiled by the totally incongruous background of the U2, all of them carrying the expression that bored kids have when they visit their poor grandpa at the nursing home.

A sad show, really, and sadder if you truly love Cohen as I do.

I finally got the chance to see this film and I have to say that I am amazed: I just cannot see how there could be such a massive praise for it. Admittedly, the title is beautiful (and it's what made me watch it, ultimately), and the acting is excellent (it truly is, and not just the two girls). But it's the content that is so full of cliches that pointing at this movie as a symbol of "European cinema" as opposed to "Hollywood" is a crying shame. Are we trying to mix up "Dreamlife"'s trivial script with Fellini, Godard, Wenders?

We have Isa (the angel, who quite appropriately sells Christmas cards): she invariably does or feels the "good thing". We have Marie (the devil): abused, and therefore (sure, we can explain everything) ungrateful, arrogant, vulgar and (fortunately for us, given that she doesn't have a scrap of thing to say for the whole movie) suicidal. Marie is the one who gets naked, and she's the one who holds a threatening knife, of course. And of course the rich, spoiled kid is only doing what the morally corrupt bourgeoisie does, that is, buying his way into as many beds as he can.

I often blame myself for being too sensitive and shedding tears even for films that aren't worth it, but in this case I felt miles away from the story. The huge amount of predictable cliches kills all: such a pity for a movie whose best part is the title.

Reading the negative comments to this movie is the most baffling experience: those who hate it seem to take action flicks as comparisons, talking about holes in the plot or whatever else that is pointless, failing to understand that this movie comes closer to poetry than most. Needless to say, the script is superb and Paul Auster shows to be a modern master of the literary genre, excelling as much on the screen as he does on paper (the scenes with Dafoe and Keitel are stunning, Dafoe telling the firefly story is memorable): this movie is all about reality and exactly because it feels so real it couldn't care less about realism. I watched Lulu with an open heart and it was all clear to me, all the words made perfect sense. But criticizing this Paul Auster gem because of your typical, run-of-the-mill Hollywood expectations is nothing but a crime.