June 25, 2006

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man.

Leonard Cohen: The Book of Longing "The filmmaker, Lian Lunson, gets it!" Jennifer MacMillan opens the Leonard Cohen "mini-blog-a-thon" with an appreciation of Lunson's doc, Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man.

Salon's Stephanie Zacharek is sure the doc "has been made with love, and even when it's not quite measuring up to your hopes, you feel warmed by its affection.... Cohen hardly comes off as morose: He may be a serious-minded guy, but he's also a vibrant, vital presence."

"[H]e continually undercuts his own solemnity," notes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Here is he is on his own mystique as a silver-tongued Casanova: 'My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly the 10,000 nights I spent alone.'"

Still, the Voice's Laura Sinagra finds the doc "rather grating hagiography."

Updated through 7/2.

indieWIRE sends its weekly questions to Lunson.

Jeffrey Wells records Cohen's parting remark just prior to a screening of the film at the Los Angeles Film Festival on Saturday night.

Online listening tip. On Bookworm, Michael Silverblatt talks with Cohen about his new Book of Longing (MP3). Via Ed Champion.

Updates, 6/30: Greg Burk has a fine long talk with Cohen in the LA Weekly: "He picks up the lone fully strung ax, and the famous arpeggiation mode he invented swells out effortlessly from his fingers. He's thinking about a tour, and he's been practicing."

Still, for Bradford Nordeen, the film is an "atrocity."

Updates, 7/1: Gary Dretzka offers a history of Cohen's music in film at Movie City News.

Gene Seymore in the Los Angeles Times: "Director Lian Lunson attempts to mold a synthesis of biopic, symposium, concert film and mash note to one of the icons of late 20th century songwriting. The creature that results from such earnest work looks either exotic or distorted, depending on your angle of vision."

Updates, 7/2: Michael Guillen and Zach Campbell.



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Posted by dwhudson at June 25, 2006 5:00 AM

Comments

Thanks for the online listening tip! This interview is fascinating. A lot of times when I read or listen to Leonard Cohen I'm trying to figure out the very nature of poetry and how the life of the poet unfolds in conjunction to the writing. Some of the things L.C. revealed in this interview frightened the shit out of me!

Posted by: jmac at June 25, 2006 9:41 AM

It's the first time I've heard him speak (except for a few spoken introductions on live recordings). No wonder nearly every reviewer of the film mentions that voice.

Posted by: David Hudson at June 25, 2006 12:32 PM

The film is obviously made with love, true. But as a Cohen fan I found it terrible, I've got to agree with most of Laura Sinagra's review. It totally misses the point -- all of the intelligence and humor of Cohen, drowns here in the solemnity of Hallmark-quality veneration. By far the best bits are Cohen himself, as usual. He's an amazing person to listen to, speaking or singing. But these bits are all too brief. Perhaps someone should do an illegal edit to release the interview clips only! Or maybe the DVD will have the interview on its own as an extra.

Posted by: Hannah E. at June 26, 2006 11:22 AM

From our Sundance '06 coverage...
"On the low end of the spectrum would be the execrable Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, which intersperses fair-to-middling versions of Cohen classics with contemporary interviews with the great poet/songwriter. Audiences would be better served by seeking out the legendary Ladies & Gentlemen, Mr Leonard Cohen (clips of which briefly appear in the former film)."

In retrospect, I believe that I was too kind.

Posted by: Jonathan Marlow at June 26, 2006 12:06 PM