A mid-length Canadian
documentary profiling poet/novelist Leonard Cohen in the early 60s, a couple
years before his move to the United States to pursue a career in music. He was well-known even then, with a kind of
hip, wry, deadpan persona; a cross between Bob Dylan and Lenny Bruce. A camera follows Cohen as he wanders the
streets, putters around his modest apartment, submits to interviews and gives
public readings to enthused audiences.
The filmmaking quality vacillates between sloppy and routine, making little
effort to distinguish itself beyond standard TV-style docs, which means that it
can only be as interesting as its subject.
Cohen is too self-conscious to be a truly compelling subject. It would be different if he was amidst a
particular challenge at the moment. One
of the more interesting parts of the film is a climactic scene in which Cohen
is allowed to watch some of the footage taken of him; shots of him asleep in
bed, rising to open a window, and bathing.
He is quick to observe that he is acting in these scenes, not truly being
himself. While in the tub, he scribbles “caveat
emptor” (“let the buyer beware”) on the wall next to him as a sly means of
including the audience in what he calls “the con;” the fact that not everything
in this purportedly true life document is unvarnished reality. This is a troubling fact of non-fiction
filmmaking that most filmmakers either gloss over or simply fail to see. Of course, it’s important to note that it
only happens here thanks to Cohen himself, not directors Brittain and
Owen. As a time-capsule from 1964, the
film has value; especially as a sad reminder of how far from popular favor the
poet and the intellectual have fallen in our society in the ensuing decades.
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