Search - Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man on DVD

In Awe Of The Master

P.F. Kozak | 07/02/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Leonard Cohen is a master and this documentary is a fitting tribute to a legend. The audience at the Film Forum in New York sat in awed silence while the music washed though us and the lyrics cleansed our souls. Sometimes, the words cut painfully close to the bone, reminding us of our shared experience of being human.

Leonard Cohen goes to places most of us are unwilling to look at and brings back truth that no one can deny. Bono accurately describes it as going into the abyss and laughing at it. The artists performing his songs follow him there and brilliantly express the depth of his poetry set to music.

This is an outstanding film, documenting the poetic voice of our generation, and surely of many generations to come.

"

Wonderful

James Carragher | New York | 08/09/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Full disclosure: it's mighty hard to get me to think anything bad about LC, let alone say it, so I'm hardly a neutral observer when it comes to this documentary. Still, if you have any interest in Cohen and his music, this is unquestionably a must see. The commentary by Bono, Rufus Wainwright and others gets a little too reverential at times for my taste. Leonard is no saint (if for no other reason than Chelsea Hotel #2, his kiss -- and more -- and tell tale about an interlude with Janis Joplin) and his sly humor as he talks about his life peeks through again and again, leavening the endless accolades from his admirers. There are many wonderful pictures of Cohen as a child and the film ends by repeating one of him on a tricycle. My favorite though, and one that I think ties together all the contradictions in his life and work, is one of a ten or twelve year old Leonard neatly dressed and combed but for an unmanageable cowlick, and standing with a bouquet of flowers in front of a statue of Mary.

The singers do great justice to Leonard's work, including Rufus Wainwright in Hallelujuah and the aforementioned Chelsea Hotel (a somewhat different tune from Rufus's point of view). But best of all for me were his sister Martha and her version of The Traitor and backup singers Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen stepping up with a glorious Anthem. Only Nick Cave and, sadly, Anna and Kate McGarrigle are weak in the parade of spectacular voices singing spectacular songs.

Toward the end of the film, Leonard muses about touring again, a prospect that, he says on camera, gets better the more he and others in the scene drink. And then he whets our appetite for such a probably-not-to-happen tour by performing Tower of Song, dressed impeccably as his haberdasher father would have liked, and backed by U2. How much would the tickets for Leonard touring with U2 as a backing band scalp for? Let the bidding start at a thousand or so."