"Give me Leonard Cohen afterworld
So I can sigh eternally"

Nirvana

Some "bright" computer graphics artist came up with the irritating idea of sprinkling red sparkles throughout the concert to foreshadow the final number—Cohen's inimitable gravelly rendition of "Tower of Song" with U2 before a red sequin curtain in a New York City cabaret. It's good to see the old guy on stage finally, but what should have been a true highlight ends up being a letdown--an hour and a half of foreplay without consummation.

Fortunately, enough entertaining and illuminating moments remain to make the film worthwhile. And we are offered tidbits through Cohen's unsentimental interview segments that are full of self deprecation and dry humor--best illustrated when Cohen reads his hilarious new prologue for a Chinese translation of his 1966 novel Beautiful Losers:

This is a difficult book, even in English, if it is taken too seriously. May I suggest that you skip over the parts you don't like? Dip into it here and there. Perhaps there will be a passage, or even a page, that resonates with your curiosity. After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover. In any case, I thank you for your interest in this odd collection of jazz riffs, pop-art jokes, religious kitsch and muffled prayer are an interest which indicates, to my thinking, a rather reckless, though very touching, generosity on your part.

True to form, Cohen declares that he's not a nostalgic person. That doesn't prevent others from expressing glowing tributes, however. U2 guitarist Edge likens him to Moses descending from Mt. Sinai with tablets of revelation while Bono declares, “He is our Shelley; he is our Byron!” He further elaborates on Cohen's dark romanticism--continuously seeking Truth and Beauty. Easy to see why Cohen has generally avoided interviews and feels uncomfortable with praise. While this hyperbole serves an educational purpose like a “Leonard Cohen for Dummies” text, the film would be better served by allowing Cohen's powerful lyrics to speak for themselves. People that don't “get” Leonard Cohen will have either walked out of the theater already or ejected the DVD anyway.

Indeed, Leonard Cohen songs loom like giant metaphoric boulders upon the page—timeless and weighty meditations on love, sex, and spirituality. Before he turned to pop music, Cohen was a relatively obscure Canadian poet and author, who carefully selected his words until they articulated exactly what he wanted. Even after turning to the more lucrative venue of music, Cohen remained true to his artistic temperament, refusing to crank out commercial fare--remaining true to himself and painfully creating lyrics dredged from his deepest thoughts and experiences.

Just as high school literature textbooks reduce Edgar Alan Poe's ideal theme to "the death of a beautiful woman," many explain Leonard Cohen's poetry as primarily dealing with how love and sex lead to a spiritual awakening. So frequent does this theme emerge that Cohen was once considered a "ladies man" and even produced an album by that name; something that Cohen says "caused him to laugh bitterly during the 10,000 nights I spent alone." Despite the preponderance of equating sexual love to the spiritual, this isn't always the case. Cohen points out that his oft covered “Suzanne” actually has a more earthly basis—that it was actually about the wife of a friend, who lived by the river in Montreal and often served Constant Comment tea. Sometimes the sex is about sex. He unabashedly reveals that he was describing a blow job from Janis Joplin in Chelsea Hotel #2:

I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best, I can't keep track of each fallen robin. I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, That's all, I don't even think of you that often.

I kept hoping that the Handsome Family's offering of "Famous Blue Raincoat" would be included, but alas it's not in the film. Perhaps the DVD will included the excluded numbers in their entirety; that would inspire me to add it to my library. As would any extra feature that would include more songs performed by Cohen himself. But we should be grateful that we finally get this offering, as Cohen has only infrequently entered the public scene lately. Ten years ago he was ordained as a monk at the Mount Baldy Zen Center, taking a Dharma name meaning “Silent One.” At least we have this film to savor a few good moments.

Yeah my friends are gone and my hair is grey I ache in the places where I used to play And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on I'm just paying my rent every day