Hallelujah:
Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song

Final Show! August 17:

With a gentle and intellectual tone, Geller and Goldfine’s film strikes a chord that feels like Leonard Cohen himself. It shows how he emerged as a respected elder right from the start, coming onto the folk music scene older than a lot of his colleagues, and with a profoundly poetic view of the world. There are stories from collaborators like Judy Collins, who speaks of hearing “Suzanne” for the first time, and from producers like Clive Davis, who states that “he didn’t walk in anybody else’s path.”

When he released “Hallelujah” in the 1980s, by contrast, it was initially rejected and ignored by the music business. In fact, it took two or three decades for the song to become the universally known pop-hymn that it is today. Tracking the origins of the song (Cohen supposedly wrote as many as 180 verses), the film documents the roles Bob Dylan, John Cale, and the late Jeff Buckley played in resurrecting it. And it takes us right up to modern times, with Brandi Carlile and Erich Church eloquently discussing what made them tackle it onstage.

As NY Times critic A.O. Scott writes, Leonard Cohen’s gift is in providing “commentary and companionship amid the gloom, offering a wry, openhearted perspective on the puzzles of the human condition.” This film, he continues,”is, accordingly, not a movie designed to make you feel better about anything... But this generous documentary is nonetheless ... a source of illumination for both die-hard and casual fans, and even to people who love Cohen’s most famous song without being aware that he wrote it.”

(US / 2021 / Directed by Daniel Geller & Dayna Goldfine)
PG-13 / 1 hr 55 mins