A Cohen love story
Saying so long to Marianne
Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love (M, 97 mins) Directed by Nick Broomfield Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★1⁄2
It’s a seductive story to recount. In the early 1960s, the young and struggling writer Leonard Cohen travelled to the astonishing Greek island of Hydra.
While he was there, he met a young woman named Marianne Ihlen. She was a single mother, living in a sparse and simply built whitewashed cottage on a hill.
Ihlen and Cohen became a couple. But, as Cohen discovered fame and fortune as a singersongwriter, the relationship withered in the face of his relentless womanising and restlessness. Eventually they parted, but not before Ihlen had inspired several of Cohen’s best early songs.
For 50 years, they had little contact. But in 2016, only a few months before his death, Cohen received word that Ihlen was deathly ill. He emailed a widely misquoted note to her, which somehow made it to the media. Dearest Marianne,
I’m just a little behind you, close enough to take your hand. This old body has given up, just as yours has too.
I’ve never forgotten your love and your beauty. But you know that. I don’t have to say any more. Safe travels old friend. See you down the road. Endless love and gratitude. – your Leonard
The note became a viral sensation in November that year, when Cohen died, just a little behind Ihlen, as he had intimated he would.
And so the idea of an unconquerable, eternal love was resurrected and added to the already over-loaded myth of Cohen.
Nick Broomfield (Whitney: Can I Be Me) just loves this story, or at least has deduced that there is a public appetite for it.
He also has a gold-plated excuse to place himself in the story, as he was, after Cohen, a lover of Ihlen. And he – like Cohen – regards her as a muse. To quote Gary Oldman in True Romance: ‘‘That makes us practically related.’’
But Broomfield’s problem is that the story doesn’t add up to a film. There is a 50-year hole in the narrative and Broomfield has nothing but Cohen to fill it with.
There are only asides on Ihlen’s life after Hydra. Presumably having grown weary of the narcissists and egoists who dream of becoming writers and filmmakers, she wised up and married an oil executive.
So, while the relationship between Ihlen and Cohen bookends this film, it is not at the heart of it, no matter what the advertising tells you. Rather, this is a pretty good – not great – biopic of Cohen, with a little extra detail on one relationship in particular.
Ihlen remains mute and mostly invisible through the middlestages. Broomfield is happy to throw the queasy term ‘‘muse’’ around with an old man’s fervour, without ever asking how Ihlen viewed herself.
She remains locked in a time and a place, offered up only as a reminiscence for a man’s gaze.
If you are happy to embrace the myth, then you may find yourself quite moved by this film. But, if you were hoping for something a bit more clear-eyed and truthful, you may be as underwhelmed as I was.
Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is screening now on Lightbox, iTunes and YouTube.