Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
For a modest troubadour, Leonard Cohen does bring out the messianic in his followers. Here's U2 guitarist The Edge in the new tribute concert film ``Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man": ``He came down from the mountaintop with the stone tablets after talking to the angels." Australian rocker Nick Cave talks of how discovering Cohen during his small-town youth ``just changed things." Bono calls the singer ``our Shelley, our Byron."
Not bad for a melancholic enigma with a voice like a box of gravel.
Of course, anyone who's a fan -- and it's hard to imagine someone listening to 1975's ``The Best of Leonard Cohen" or 2001's ``Ten New Songs" and not turning devotional -- understands why Cohen deserves the praise. From his beginnings in the late 1960s as a novelist-turned-songwriter, the Montreal-born bard, now 71, has pinned down pain and wonder in lyrics of magisterial simplicity. Songs such as ``Famous Blue Raincoat ," ``
Musicians especially love the guy: His songs are deep enough to lend themselves to infinite interpretations. Singer Jennifer Warnes fashioned a mini-career covering Cohen songs, Judy Collins had a hit with ``Suzanne ," and ``Hallelujah " has been taken to heart by John Cale , Rufus Wainwright , and the late Jeff Buckley .
Directed by Lian Lunson , ``Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man" expands on the idea of Cohen as the songwriter's songwriter. The film captures a concert held in January of 2005 at the Sydney Opera House , organized by producer Hal Willner and featuring talent from various points on the rock-pop-folk axis. It's something of a family affair: Rufus Wainwright is here (singing ``Hallelujah"), as is his sister, Martha Wainwright , and mother and aunt, Kate and Anna McGarrigle , respectively . Linda Thompson brings along guitarist son Teddy Thompson , who turns in a spine-tingling solo version of ``Tonight Will Be Fine" that positions him as a proper heir to his father, cult rocker Richard Thompson.
The other performances are varied and loving. Cave bites down on ``I'm Your Man" like a rocker gone lounge. Down-tempo folkie Beth Orton chips in a spooky rendition of ``Sisters of Mercy," while the ambisexual singer Antony uses his astonishing voice to transform ``If It Be Your Will " into interplanetary Roy Orbison . Whatever the approach, the songs are sturdy enough to support it while remaining resigned and elusive, their words practically glowing in the dark.
In between the acts, Lunson gives us an overview of Cohen's life connected by a long Q&A session with the songwriter himself. Through old footage, home movies, and Cohen's eerily measured words, the film fits together the pieces of a wayward career, skipping lightly over the late ' 70s and early ' 80s -- the years in the wilderness -- and settling gracefully into Cohen's five-year stay at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center in California, during which he was ordained as a roshi (and during which his manager cleaned out his bank account; no mention of that).
Some of Cohen's thoughts are penetrating, others are gnomic, occasionally banal; Lunson treats them all as pearls from the font and gussies up the frame with distracting visual and sonic elements. The closest ``I'm Your Man" comes to capturing Cohen as a human individual is in Rufus Wainwright's marvelous description of the first time he met the singer, who was in his underwear, eating noodles, and feeding a baby bird that had fallen from its nest.
Despite all the affection, then, the mystery remains unplumbed. That may be the point: After all, there's a crack in everything, as Cohen once said. Even at the end, when the singer joins U2 in a studio for a soaring version of ``Tower of Song " -- looking for all the world like a retired accountant who has walked through the wrong door -- the man over whom this lovely fuss is being made remains serenely out of reach. ``You got away, didn't you, babe?/ You just turned your back on the crowd ," Cohen once sang about Janis Joplin . She did, and so does he.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
Video
