Ray Pride

Was Leonard Cohen a poet? A joker? A ladies' man?

"That's a joke," he says in Lian Lunson's slight yet agreeable tribute doc, "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man," which suggests but does not fully capture his immense charisma or his gift for deception. "It caused me to laugh bitterly the 10,000 nights I spent alone." Affable, self-deprecating bits of the 71-year-old poet-novelist-singer-songwriter's autobiography well up between performances of Cohen's songs from a January 2005 Sydney Opera House concert that was held for his seventieth birthday (and produced by Hal Wilner). The sinister cast of much of his work remains in song, however. The chain of influence rattles in both directions in both spoken and sung testimony to the simple power of Cohen's work, as lyricist and musician, from a cocky yet respectful Nick Cave ("I'm Your Man"; "Suzanne"), an amusingly petulant Rufus Wainwright, Beth Orton, a peculiar Jarvis Cocker, Martha Wainwright, Linda Thompson and Teddy Thompson, and most memorably heart-wrenching, from Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, who sings Cohen's "If It Be Your Will" in a tremendous, tremulous falsetto.

Lunson, an Australian and a former actress, often superimposes ruby-red glass-curtain beads over the on-stage footage; a kitschy touch that grows more charming as the film persists. And it pays off in the climax, in which Cohen's accompanied on a tacky pocket cabaret stage by Bono, the Edge, et al, on "Tower of Song": the bare, growling remnants of his voice teasing both life and death from his words. "I'm just paying my rent every day," the song goes, and he pauses long, "in the tower of song."

Cohen has the life, and the wry presence, to be able to just toss off something as elevated as "Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash"; "I had the title 'poet,' and maybe for a while I was one," he narrates from an introduction of his work. "Also the title 'singer' was kindly accorded me--even though I could barely carry a tune"; or on a career of writing, "You have to prepare yourself, you don't really command the enterprise." Cohen's spent a large part of the last thirty-plus years studying Zen, this Montreal Jew born into the rag trade, this silver-tongued, silver-haired, rasp-voiced, tailored-suited man. "What you hold in your hand," he introduces one volume with, "is more of a sunstroke than a book." The smile in his intonation is larger than the one on his face. His words sound less pretentious pronouncements than things pondered and distilled with generosity and self-effacement.

In the lit trade, there's something called a "festschrift," in which the colleagues or fans of an artist put together a doorstop-sized volume of tributes. "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man" is the first, and much less than musty or dusty, cinematic example of the form I can think of. As someone who admires the man's work--I've even searched out and read his novels, "Beautiful Losers" and "The Favourite Game"--Cohen's confessional moments are as wry and restrained as his well-known lyrics. Others may not be as receptive, particularly after a few cutaways to Bono making various and sundry biblical incantations about Cohen's life and work. (I hope this is not why Wim Wenders thinks that this is one of the best music movies ever made.)

The weight and gravity of influence, however, is conveyed best in Cave, Wainwright and Antony's performances. The graceful rumble of Cohen's voice can be heard elsewhere, in the tender, radiant, indelible despair of his spare lyrics--spoken poetry, purifying incantation, Zen practice--and in your memory once you've heard it.

"Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2006-07-11)

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