With “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song”, directors Dayna Goldfine and Dan Gellar examine how the composition managed to take on a life of its own.
Leonard Cohen had already advanced in his career when he finally ended Hallelujah.
Well the first version of Hallelujah – there would be many, many versions when it was all over. You have been working on the lyrics for seven years. However, when she sent the album, Various positionsfor his longtime Columbia Records label in 1984, the company president, Walter Yetnikoff, has decided not to release it in the United States. What would become Cohen’s seminal anthem was, at first, dead.
But in the new documentary “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, a Song“, in theaters Friday, directors Dayna Goldfine and Dan Gellar examine how, despite the difficulties, the song managed to take on a life of its own after being rejected from the studio thanks, in varying degrees, to Bob Dylan, Giovanni Cale, Jeff Buckley And Shrek.
Now, four decades after its initial recording, it is absolutely ubiquitous, common in movies, television shows and singing competitions around the world.
It’s a curiously stitched film that starts at the end: his last performance in 2013, singing Hallelujah, of course – and goes back to the beginning of his songwriting career to show how he got there. It looks, in a way, like two different films: the first part is a standard biographical documentary which then shifts the focus to the resurrection of Hallelujah from Cohen, before finally turning his attention to Cohen and his triumphant final tour. As the title says, it is a very long journey.
The filmmakers are passionate about their eloquent figures, from Judy Collins and the composer / arranger John Lissauer to a childhood friend and to the rabbi Mordechi Finley. One of the main voices is the journalist and author Larry “Ratso” Sloman who interviewed Cohen many times in 30 years and whose tapes of those interviews are used to get Cohen to speak for himself. The archival footage is also quite stunning and elegantly combined with Cohen’s music.
Much of the film is devoted to chronicling Cohen’s spiritual journey and his evolving relationship with the Jewish faith, from his poetry to his later years in a Zen center atop Mount Baldy. Singer Regina Spektor he is impressed by his graceful presentation at the Coachella in 2009saying it was like Cohen was teaching the audience to be good.
Yet for all the talk and praise for his research, this is a film that seems completely uninterested in Cohen being a father of two. We see photos of them as children with their mother during an informal mention that their family was separating. A reporter mentions the children later, but only in the context of clarifying that their mother Suzanne Elrod it really wasn’t the woman he was singing about suzanne.
There can be many reasons for this, including possibly honoring the wishes of your adult children or wanting to focus on work. But the absence of any acknowledgment of this makes this attempt at a profound and holistic representation of Cohen seem incomplete at best. There is more time spent explaining the aesthetics of Shrek with respect to your relationship with your children.
Or maybe they just weren’t really part of the route Hallelujaheven though his daughter had a son with Rufus Wainwright, to whom we owe one of the most famous covers of the song, featured in the famous soundtrack of Shrek.
Much credit for the long life of music goes to Shrek. While movie soundtracks have dropped slightly in the cultural capital, it’s hard to underestimate the power of hearing great music for the first time in a movie.
Interestingly, however, it appears to have been John Cale’s cover that became the most influential. He took off the arrangement, went to the piano, sang out loud and turned around Hallelujah in a melodic hymn.
Jeff Buckley he also said that although Cohen wrote the song, it was the version of Cale he was using. No one, apparently, from Brandi Carlile to Bono to Eric Church is singing Cohen’s version.
In an interview, later Hallelujah arrived in 1st place (with the competitor of X Factor Alexandra Burke), 2nd place (Jeff Buckley) and 36th place (Cohen) in the UK in 2008, Cohen said she thought “people should stop singing it for a while”. Sloman thinks she was joking, but it doesn’t matter now. The music has gotten bigger than Cohen and looks set to live on in the culture for years to come. / TRANSLATION LÍVIA BUELONI GONÇALVES
Source: Terra
Emily Jhon is a product and service reviewer at Gossipify, known for her honest evaluations and thorough analysis. With a background in marketing and consumer research, she offers valuable insights to readers. She has been writing for Gossipify for several years and has a degree in Marketing and Consumer Research from the University of Oxford.
