Sunday, July 23, 2006

Movie Review: Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man

By Dan Gattuso

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

This documentary on the legendary singer-songwriter features performances by those musicians he has influenced. Woven through a riveting tribute is a career-spanning interview with the man himself. Sprinkled with his own artwork and personal photos, Cohen speaks of his stately writing process; "savage criticisms" exchanged with fellow Montreal poets; the scene at the Chelsea Hotel; tea and oranges with the real Suzanne; his retreat to Mt. Baldy and more.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

Leonard Cohen is one of those artists whose songs are often best performed by others, and it could be that his raspy, almost spoken-word baritone has unintentionally obscured his brilliant songwriting. But the list of musicians whose work has been influenced by the Montreal-born poet is a long and distinguished one.

Cohen's songs have been covered to varying degrees of success by Tori Amos, Joan Baez, Bono, Joe Cocker, Neil Diamond, Roberta Flack, Peter Gabriel, Don Henley, Billy Joel, Elton John, k.d. lang, Willie Nelson, Aaron Neville, R.E.M., Diana Ross, Sting, Suzanne Vega and Trisha Yearwood. And, of course, there's Jeff Buckley's legendary version of Hallelujah.

Those are some of the more recognizable names, and that's probably the first and last time all those musicians will be mentioned together in the same sentence. The broad variety of musical styles present in that list speaks volumes about the surprising accessibility of such complex art, which is ironic because few mainstream music fans have ever heard of Leonard Cohen.

Nick Cave, Beth Orton, Martha and Rufus Wainwright, and the other artists who gathered for "Came So Far For Beauty," a tribute concert at the Sydney Opera House in January 2005, may be lesser known; but their contributions to the canon of Cohen covers are no less valid than anyone else's. The concert proves how Cohen's songs, often littered with biblical references, both real and imagined, can be arranged and rearranged without ever erasing the eloquence of his words.

For Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, director Lian Lunson uses that concert as a springboard to interviews with some of the musicians who took part, as well as U2's Bono and The Edge and, most importantly, the man himself.

Now in his early seventies, Cohen's modest musings on the unimportance of his songs actually contain deep insights into the painstaking perfectionism that goes into his writing. Like Bono says at one point in the film: "We'd all be humbled by the work he throws away." It also illuminates the extraordinary intellect, wit and wisdom that create such extremely private prose—words that can also be interpreted an infinite number of ways and tell our own personal stories with efficiency of language and without pretension.

Unlike its calm subject, however, the film has bouts of ADD. Messy visual overlays and sparse biographical information are counterproductive to the musical story established by basing the documentary around a concert. An excursion to his one-time home at the Zen Center on Mt. Baldy in California seems like an afterthought, as though Lunson wasn't sure exactly what her film was about: Cohen or the influence of his writing.

More Cohen on Cohen and less doting and idolization from the featured musicians would have served the film better. But Lunson does let the man speak for the songs and the songs speak for themselves, and that's enough for diehard fans and newcomers alike to enjoy Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man.

This story was submitted by a member of the TexasGigs community.

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