Leonard Cohen, very seriously, calls him Mr. Dylan, before discussing their most recent meeting. We are in 1986 in a press conference, in connection with a concert-tribute to the great Bobby, honored by the ASCAP, copyright society. “It was in Paris, in a café at 14e borough, says Cohen. We talked shop… “Your songs, my songs, we compare ourselves, we congratulate each other. “We exchanged song lyrics, both flabbergasted by each other’s genius…” Laughter in the audience.
Relativity of things: Leonard the perseverant had taken “seven years” to write and rewrite the text of Hallelujah (some 180 variants in his notebooks), and Dylan the gifted entertainer, “about fifteen minutes in a taxi” for I and ICohen’s favorite on the album Infidels. Anecdote which, like a cockfight of singer-songwriters, justifies the two hours of the documentary Hallelujah. Leonard Cohen, a journey, a hymn, directed by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine. There is a lot to tell, and the story lasts a long time (more than seven years: Cohen had minimized…).
The double path
It’s a double path that we follow, the twists and turns of a career and the spiritual… and sensual journey of a man. ” Between Holiness and Horniness “, sums up Larry “Ratso” Slowman, a long-time journalist at rolling Stone and privileged interlocutor of Cohen and Dylan, who kept his cassettes and films of interviews and who comments on what is missing.
Two hours about a single song, was it a hymn? That leaves a lot of others out, but the storyline benefits greatly. Even if we end up getting tired of hearing all these versions. It’s the phenomenon of the song Conceived for Lennon: the whole world has appropriated it and uses it in all its sauces. There is a moment when it takes up all the space, to such an extent that wear and tear sets in. Same for Hallelujah.
Twists and re-readings
The story is nevertheless fascinating, full of twists and turns: completed, recorded in 1984, the song is initially ignored, lost in the middle of an album refused by the record company. The boss of the Columbia tablet Various Positions. Leonard Cohen is upset, but quips in an interview: “I feel like I have a huge posthumous career ahead of me…”
It will take a young hero of the author’s song, himself a child of folksingerrevealed Hallelujah : it was Jeff Buckley, son of Tim Buckley, who passed the torch. In truth, through a version by John Cale in 1991. Which is heard in the film Shrek, but performed by Rufus Wainwright on the soundtrack. And if the song remains associated with Buckley, the versions are so numerous, from kd lang to Regina Specktor and from Brandi Carlisle to Justin Timberlake, that one gets lost. Luckily Leonard Cohen picked it up so memorably on his last few tours.
Challenge taken up even in this jumble of echoing covers, the documentary shines with its clarity and its sources, including the exceptional access to Cohen’s archives: we see the song evolve, the lyrics both inspired and sweaty: Leonard speaks very precisely of “perseverance and grace”. It is also the grace of documentary filmmakers: their man knows how to say as much as he knows how to write. And he seduces as soon as he appears on the screen. When you also have the right to explanations from your rabbi, it helps. When it comes to Cohen, no one is more perfectly eloquent and concise than Leonard.