Hallelujah, the words of Leonard Cohen

This is not a biopic

Here is finally a film about a legend of song, the Canadian Leonard Cohen who died in 2016 in Los Angeles. Long presented as a sort of rival of Bob Dylan, whom he knew well, Leonard Cohen is also going to sign with Columbia and that’s pretty much the only thing they have in common, even if we can find a lot of spirituality also in Bob Dylan, the mysterious folk poet. This nearly two-hour film is not a biopic as one might fear. It is made up only of archive films, interviews and unpublished images and what makes it its great strength, even if it gives clues about the life of the singer, it is above all because it is built around the genesis and future of Leonard Cohen’s flagship song, Hallelujah, that almost everyone has hummed without knowing that it was he who created it and that it has almost 150 verses, a bit like the Torah, with a lot of spirituality but also a lot of eroticism. Through this beautiful film, we see how the song was born, how he knew how to impose it, especially since he was not destined to sing on a stage, he who began by writing poems and who every day rubs shoulders with the melancholy and depression.

A hauntingly warm voice

It is Judy Collins, who intervenes in the film, who will allow him to go on stage and deliver this magnificent song which gives its title to the film and which will go around the world. Many singers have covered it and we even hear it in the first Shrek, whose production however insisted on modifying the lyrics finding them too erotic. But it is the warm voice of this anguished and modest crooner who will interpret it best, even if we are given throughout the film to discover other interpretations including that of Jeff Buckley who will make a hit that will overshadow almost its creator. The film retraces the life of this dignified man, renowned for his charm with women, for his commitment to the search for purity in a Buddhist community where he stayed for seven years before returning to the world to continue his enchanted world tour and singing. Unfortunately, Leonard Cohen died before the end of the production of this film which he will not have been able to see, but we discover there for the first time his numerous notebooks of songs and notes.

Hallelujah, so it is

What a beautiful life and how this film manages to recreate it through a number of interviews with people who knew him well, his arrangers, his friends and, in particular, Rabbi Mordecai Finley, Nancy Bacal, his childhood friend since nearly 80 years old, along with fellow intellectuals Adrienne Clarkson, composer Larry “Ratso” Sloman, and more. And also his long-time girlfriend, photographer Dominique Issermann, who is probably the one who speaks of it most fondly: “With this legendary voice, surfing on waves of bass, he speaks without seeing them, of the darkness from the stage, to these serious and intense faces, turned towards him, thanking him constantly from one concert to another for having turned their lives upside down. He sings this prayer to stop war, all wars, this prayer to be loved, to stay there and to stay free, this prayer to merge and to be alone. He writes, he composes, he sings as one builds cathedrals from which he launches his sublime songs which spread in mysterious and initiatory echoes on his audience also touched by grace. Like the waves of a stone thrown into the water, Hallelujah endlessly multiplies until the crossroads of ecstasy and freedom. Hallelujah!!! »

Hallelujah, the words of Leonard Cohen – Once upon a time in cinema