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He's Our Man
Documentary on singer-songwriter
reveals something of his Jewish soul.
George Robinson
Special to the Jewish News
L
eonard Cohen isn't always clear on
when he began writing, but he is
utterly certain when asked about
the first poetry he remembers reading.
About a third of the way into Leonard
Cohen: I'm Your Man, a new documen-
tary-cum-concert film, the estimable song-
writer-poet-novelist says, "The first poetry
that affected me was in the synagogue â
the prayer book and the Bible. That would
send shivers down my spine."
In a film co-produced by Mel Gibson and
directed by Lian Lunson, who collaborated
with Gibson on Music Inspired by the
Passion of the Christ, that admission
might seem shocking, but Cohen has never
shied from his Jewish upbringing and there
are many moments in his music and in
the film when one is forcibly and happily
reminded of it.
Cohen's music and poetry have been a
touchstone for so many musicians and writ-
ers of a certain generation that it's hard to
imagine a time when he wasn't around and
creating. It is also hard to imagine that he
will be 68 years old in September; like his
most obvious cohort Bob Dylan, he's not a
young rebel anymore.
Then again, as Cohen himself points
out in the film, he was never your typical
1960s musician anyway, favoring suits and
ties over jeans and T-shirts. That sartorial
choice, which suited him well and still does
(no pun intended), grew out of his father's
unusual background; trained as an engi-
neer, the elder Cohen ended up in the cloth-
ing business.
Cohen's father died when the boy was
only 9, and that triggered the first writing
he remembers, a message he enclosed in
one of his father's bow ties and buried in
the backyard. "It was some kind of a prayer,
but I don't remember what I wrote,' he says
in the film.
The documentary had its origins in a
tribute concert that the redoubtable Hal
Willner produced in Sydney, Australia,
Lunson's hometown. As he has done in his
previous projects, ranging from collections
of Thelonious Monk and Kurt Weill to a
Disney song album, Willner chose inventive
but occasionally unlikely musicians to per-
form Cohen's music, and Lunson captured
the event on film.
She then sat down with Cohen and inter-
viewed him at great length; he also gave
her access to a large selection of his own
artwork and photographs that trace his life
from earliest childhood through his explo-
sive emergence in the Montreal literary
scene and rock world in the '60s.
Structurally, Leonard Cohen: I'm Your
Man is pretty straightforward, alternating
concert footage with Cohen's disarmingly
frank reminiscences, punctuated by enco-
mia from the likes of Bono and the Edge,
n, director Lian Lunson and Bono.
Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave and Willner.
Not surprisingly, the best moments in the
film come from the filmed concert. Willner
assembled a terrific "house" band that
includes several New York City downtown
denizens led by Steven Bernstein, including
drummer Kenny Wollesen, keyboardist Rob
Burger and a deftly flexible string section.
Most of the cover versions of Cohen's
songs are nothing short of remarkable.
Rufus and Martha Wainwright provide
several sterling moments, most memora-
bly a gypsy-tango version of "Everybody
Knows" and a country waltz rendition of
"The Traitor" on which Martha channels
Patsy Cline ably. Teddy Thompson (son of
Richard and Linda Thompson, wearing a
shirt that says "Like Father Like Son") turns
"Tonight Will Be Fine" into an alt-country
ballad-anthem, and Jarvis Cocker treats
"Death of a Ladies Man" as a slightly snarky
punk-lounge item, nicely catching the
humor in Cohen's writing, one quality that
most of the others overlook.
The two most moving musical moments
in the film, however, come from the two
songs in the concert that are the most
overtly religious in tone, and feature the
most unlikely and the most obvious choice
of performers. Antony (of Antony and the
Johnsons) gives an extraordinarily impas-
sioned reading to "If It Be Your Will," his
reedy, quasi-countertenor rising to impas-
sioned heights befitting this most reveren-
tial of Cohen songs. And sometime-backup
singers for Cohen, Julie Christensen and
Perla Batalla, give a stunning performance
of "Anthem," definitely one of the high
points of the film.
To her credit, Lunson shoots the concert
simply, with long takes and close-ups pre-
dominating, and the performances make
the film well worth watching.
Unfortunately, the director doesn't accord
the interview footage of Cohen the same
simplicity, juggling different film stocks and
chromatic choices, throwing in slow motion,
arty over-exposures and jerky hand-held
shots of Cohen's paintings and drawings.
The result is more distraction than elucida-
tion, but Cohen himself is perfectly lucid,
unrelentingly witty and admirably candid
and he, thankfully, is the heart of the film.
Does the film's Mel Gibson connection
matter? For the most part, no, but there is
one deeply embarrassing moment in one of
the songs when Lunson dissolves into a sil-
houette of a crucifix, utterly gratuitous in its
clumsy symbolism. It's mildly upsetting, not
so much because she seems to be claiming
Cohen for some other agenda as for the
paucity of imagination it shows.
Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
opens Friday, July 14, at the Maple
Art Theatre in Bloomfield Township.
(248) 263-2111.
A Poet's Voice
Stephen Hazan Arnoff
JBooks.com
A
fter composing much of his
new poetry collection, Book
of Longing (Ecco, $24.95),
while living in a Zen monastery on
Mount Baldy in California, Leonard
Cohen winks at those curious or con-
fused about his religious wanderings:
"Anyone who says I'm not a Jew is not
a Jew/ I'm very sorry but this decision
is final."
Never one to deny Jewish influ-
ences since his early days as scion of
an esteemed Montreal family, Cohen
persistently challenges mainstream
Jewish culture.
His eclectic, searching visions bal-
ance odes of love and loss as sensual
42
July 13 a 2006
as any in popular music with impas-
sioned religious seeking filtered
through Jewish vocabulary, stories
and ideas. With the May 2006 publica-
tion of his first original collection of
poetry since 1984, Cohen emerges now
more than ever as a sensitive, engaged
transformer of the Jewish canon, enliv-
ening Jewish myths and themes in the
shadows where secular and spiritual
experience meet.
Book of Longing contains obvious
evidence of Cohen's Jewishness: God
is written as "G-d" and there's a poem
describing correspondence with a
rabbi, signed "Your Jewish brother,
Jikan Eliezer" (fusing Cohen's Zen and
Hebrew names). In addition, the Shoah,
the Sabbath and kabbalistic and biblical
terminology are referenced often.
Amidst the recurring original black,
white, and gray prints and drawings
illustrating the book, one image serves
as a kind of royal stamp: Two inter-
locking hearts curve to the shape of a
Magen David, the Jewish star, a plump,
rounded hexagram bordered by a circle
and bounded by the words "Order of
the Unified Heart."
Like this floating image, the title
and themes of Book of Longing place
Leonard Cohen in the tradition of
Jewish poets tracing national and
personal journeys of exile between the
harmony and heartbreak of theology,
day-to-day life and love.
As Cohen corresponds with tradition-
al religion and secular love laced with
spiritual meaning, his religious voice
stays sane by mixing humor and humil-
ity with reverence and daring: "I do not
have the authority or understanding
to speak of these matters/ I was just
showing off/ Please forgive me," he
writes.
But his humor and self-deference
cannot defy ambitions for revolution,
hope, beauty and wisdom, often against
the powers and trends of the main-
stream.
For those attuned or just tuning in to
the sounds of the Jewish call for har-
mony, wisdom and redemption, Leonard
Cohen's words should sound very, very
familiar. E
This review is excerpted from an
article in the June 16 issue of
JBook Reports, a Web magazine.