Marianne & Leonard. (15.)
Directed by Nick Broomfield.
Featuring Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen, Ron Cornelius, Judy Collins, Aviva Layton and Richard Vick. 102 mins.
Like the Fonzie of despair, Leonard Cohen was always able to ease the beat of the world down to his own low thud rhythm. His tours were as drug and sex-filled as those any rock'n'roll fiend's, but all with a sedate detachment. He was the peripheral figure at the heart of the action, the man on the inside looking in from the outside. He was the tortoise always safely ahead of the field of hares. Even after death, he is capable of kicking the skip out of the usually excitable documentarian Nick Bloomfield's stride. And the film's not even about him.
The Marianne is the Norwegian woman he met on the Greek island of Hydra in the early sixties, an artist colony and hippy precursor, when Leonard was still trying to make it as a novelist. Though only part of it is set there, the film is about that island just as much as it is about Ihlen and Cohen. There all the relationships were open and he became her lover and she his muse. But as the sixties turned into the seventies, and the postmodern novelist became a "poet for quasi depressed women," their time together became less and less. She remained his designated muse though, even when he was shagging Janis Joplin. Eventually, she gave up on the idyll of Hydra and everything it represented, to became a Norwegian housewife. He spent six years in a monastery, lost all his money and in his 70s became a lucrative touring act, doing the hits dressed like William S. Burroughs in a Blue Brothers tribute act. Throughout their connection remained. The Words of Love are amessage sent to her by Cohen shorlty before she died.
This is not your normal rock'n'roll memoir, and this is not your normal Broomfield documentary, the kind where he is seen front of camera with his boom mic and headphones. (To be fair, the only time he's done that this decade was Sarah Palin: You Betcha.) This time though it is personal; Broomfield was on Hydra in the early sixties, was briefly Marianne's lover and kept in touch throughout her life. The result is a film that is much more solemn.
As someone who has never really been touched by Cohen's music, (apart from, rather predictably, his contribution to the soundtracks of McCabe and Mrs Miller and Natural Born Killers) I have to say I felt a little like I'd turned up at the wrong cemetery and was hearing a stranger's eulogy. It's a story of lives formed in a utopia, a sun-blessed dream of free love and creativity, a story of lives that all seemed to end badly. Sixties utopian dreams are hard to beat, but bastards to live up to. You suspect a lot is being glossed over here. We are told that a lot of the children born and/or riased on Hydra didn't turn out well. For Broomfield though all those sixties dreams and their damage is redeemed by a few brief words of love that passed between them before their deaths.
Directed by Nick Broomfield.
Featuring Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen, Ron Cornelius, Judy Collins, Aviva Layton and Richard Vick. 102 mins.
Like the Fonzie of despair, Leonard Cohen was always able to ease the beat of the world down to his own low thud rhythm. His tours were as drug and sex-filled as those any rock'n'roll fiend's, but all with a sedate detachment. He was the peripheral figure at the heart of the action, the man on the inside looking in from the outside. He was the tortoise always safely ahead of the field of hares. Even after death, he is capable of kicking the skip out of the usually excitable documentarian Nick Bloomfield's stride. And the film's not even about him.
The Marianne is the Norwegian woman he met on the Greek island of Hydra in the early sixties, an artist colony and hippy precursor, when Leonard was still trying to make it as a novelist. Though only part of it is set there, the film is about that island just as much as it is about Ihlen and Cohen. There all the relationships were open and he became her lover and she his muse. But as the sixties turned into the seventies, and the postmodern novelist became a "poet for quasi depressed women," their time together became less and less. She remained his designated muse though, even when he was shagging Janis Joplin. Eventually, she gave up on the idyll of Hydra and everything it represented, to became a Norwegian housewife. He spent six years in a monastery, lost all his money and in his 70s became a lucrative touring act, doing the hits dressed like William S. Burroughs in a Blue Brothers tribute act. Throughout their connection remained. The Words of Love are amessage sent to her by Cohen shorlty before she died.
This is not your normal rock'n'roll memoir, and this is not your normal Broomfield documentary, the kind where he is seen front of camera with his boom mic and headphones. (To be fair, the only time he's done that this decade was Sarah Palin: You Betcha.) This time though it is personal; Broomfield was on Hydra in the early sixties, was briefly Marianne's lover and kept in touch throughout her life. The result is a film that is much more solemn.
As someone who has never really been touched by Cohen's music, (apart from, rather predictably, his contribution to the soundtracks of McCabe and Mrs Miller and Natural Born Killers) I have to say I felt a little like I'd turned up at the wrong cemetery and was hearing a stranger's eulogy. It's a story of lives formed in a utopia, a sun-blessed dream of free love and creativity, a story of lives that all seemed to end badly. Sixties utopian dreams are hard to beat, but bastards to live up to. You suspect a lot is being glossed over here. We are told that a lot of the children born and/or riased on Hydra didn't turn out well. For Broomfield though all those sixties dreams and their damage is redeemed by a few brief words of love that passed between them before their deaths.
