arts & culture
Leonard Cohen
Doc will have You
Saying ‘Hallelujah’
F JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
or a documentary to be worth
your while, its subject needs to
have historical weight. I think of
some of the better documentaries or
docuseries I’ve watched in recent years.

“Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen”
was about one of the great movies of
all time; “Woodstock 99” portrayed the
ominous zeitgeist of the late 1990s; and
“Th e Beatles: Get Back” showed the fi nal
days of an iconic band.

Going into “Hallelujah: Leonard
Cohen, A Journey, A Song,” I was not
sure if Cohen, a Jewish musician defi ned
by a single song, would fi t into that cate-
gory. Was this man important enough for
me to spend two hours learning about?
By the second half of this Sony Pictures
documentary, the answer was surprisingly
yes. Cohen was a vivid songwriter and a
spiritual seeker who, with “Hallelujah”
and its multiple versions and covers,
captured something essential about the
human experience. Who Cohen was, how
he did that and why he was able to do it
can be explained in three quotes from this
movie, out nationwide on July 8.

“Leonard, we know you’re great, but
we don’t know if you’re any good.”
According to Cohen in interview foot-
age included in the fi lm, this line was
spoken to him by Walter Yetnikoff , the
president of Columbia Records from
1975-1990. It was Yetnikoff who refused
to put out the 1984 album “Various
Positions” that included “Hallelujah” in
the United States.

Yetnikoff didn’t like the mix, Cohen
said in additional interview footage, and
was convinced it wouldn’t sell. Before
“Various Positions,” the singer-song-
writer released fi ve albums through
Columbia Records. Yet the one that
would include his greatest song was not
even good enough to release.

Th e song and album, of course, came
out in the United Kingdom, Canada and
several other countries before becoming
iconic in the U.S., too. But it was the
type of classic that, through its many
lives and recreations, from Jeff Buckley’s
1994 cover to its inclusion in the 2001 hit
movie “Shrek” to Alexandra Burke’s UK
chart-topping rendition from the reality
show “Th e X Factor” in 2008, transcended
a single album release and radio cycle.

Th is was true of Cohen, too. He never
had an album reach No. 1 on the U.S.

charts. He never won a Grammy Award
until his lifetime achievement honor in
2010. He may not have been any good,
but he was great.

“It evokes some of the most primitive
human desires, and it marries it with a
concept that so many of us struggle with,
which is spirituality.”
Brandi Carlile, the critically-acclaimed
singer-songwriter, is one of the best inter-
viewees in this fi lm. About 75 minutes
in, she explains why Buckley’s cover of
“Hallelujah” gets to her when she sums it
up with the quote above.

Earlier in the documentary, another
interviewee says a review he was read-
ing described Cohen’s career as “pulled
between holiness and horniness.” Pulled
between the spiritual and the primitive,
in other words.

His lyrics in “Hallelujah,” which dig
into both the transcendent desire for
spirituality and the primitive desire for
human connection, connect these two
desires more than any of his other songs,
and perhaps more than any song. And
in their unifi cation, as Cohen, Buckley
and so many others sing, we can only say
Hallelujah. “You’re getting things that are so deep
and so resonant in your own spiritual
journey that you are benefi ting from his.

And that’s of course the highest compli-
ment to a poet or a songwriter.”
Another good interviewee is Judy
Collins, the singer-songwriter whose
career spans more than half a century.

Collins knew Cohen in the 1960s before
he was a singer — back when he was a
poet. She recorded her version of a song
Cohen wrote on one of her early albums.

In the line above, Collins explains
why Cohen was able to marry the
primitive and the spiritual. He was, to
Leonard Cohen performing later in life.

Courtesy of Leonard Cohen Family Trust
put it simply, a poet.

Cohen published four poetry col-
lections and two novels between 1956
and 1966, before his fi rst album, “Songs
of Leonard Cohen,” came out in 1967.

While you can’t really answer the ques-
tion of why poets and prose writers write,
as there’s a certain inherent value and
beauty to creation, Collins’ quote above
gets about as close as you can to doing so.

But really, as Collins herself was allud-
ing to, the answer was in “Hallelujah”
itself. It’s a song that, for a reason that’s
hard to express, gets people to stand and
cheer and feel, in place aft er place, decade
aft er decade, from singer aft er singer.

Th e man who created that is well worth
two hours of your time. JE
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
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