MARIANNE & LEONARD: WORDS OF LOVE
D: Nick Broomfield (2019) ¢ ¢
The relationship between songwriter Leonard Cohen and his muse and sometime lover Marianne Ihlen turns out to be not much of a thread to hang a feature-length documentary on, at least in the case of this one. It's a matter of too much irrelevant information and (for Cohen fans, anyway) not nearly enough music. She was a free spirit who fed and supported and inspired him for a few years on a Greek island back in the hippie-era '60s. He was an artist who liked to fuck around and hated to stay long anywhere. He wrote "So Long, Marianne" about her as they drifted apart, but they never lost touch completely, and in what's easily the film's most affecting moment, a dying Marianne listens to somebody reading Leonard's final letter to her. He was dying himself by then, and three months after she passed away, he was gone, too.
