Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 2, 2017

There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

I’m not sure whether Leonard Cohen was consciously referencing one of the more arcane aspects of Lurianic Kabbalah in that redolent lyric, but it’s certainly possible. Cohen’s religiosity was never far beneath the surface of much of his writing, even if he cloaked it in language that didn’t always overtly refer to ideas of the Divine. But there’s a longstanding Mishnaic tradition in Judaism which is referred to as tikkun olam, which is typically translated as “repair of the world”, but which took on a rather interesting aspect in the teachings of 16th century rabbi Isaac Luria, one of a coterie of mystics who made the Safed of that era a virtual hotbed of metaphysical thought and writing. In Luria’s formation, a contraction of the Divine Essence, perhaps somewhat similar to another kabbalistic image, that of tzim tzum, created vessels of light that were self-limiting activities by The Big Guy Upstairs which in turn were scattered as sparks that are more or less caught in physical creation. Prayer, fasting and other traditional methods of uniting with the beyond can crack the husks (so to speak), allowing those Divine sparks to break free of their physical confines and reunite with their maker, thereby repairing the world and bringing tikkun olam to fruition. The fact that Cohen, whether consciously or not, could evoke so much occult imagery in only two lines, while in fact turning the specific Jewish imagery on its head (i.e., letting the light in rather than out) is perhaps a salient example of why Cohen is so beloved in songwriting circles where intelligence and craft are honored and admired.

Cohen’s connection to his Jewish heritage was probably inescapable, given not just his upbringing, which was evidently pretty rigorously Orthodox, but due to his very surname, one which connotes he’s of the “priestly class”, the kohenim, descendants of Aaron. Cohen is actually on record stating that the whole aspect of being a kohen provided foundational elements to his psyche that probably ended up informing much of his writing later on. Interestingly, at least for those who think of Cohen as “only” a songwriter, he came to his music career relatively late, after a less than successful stint trying to make prose and poetry writing a career.

There’s an old adage that states “two Jews, three opinions,” something that doesn’t just refer to changing viewpoints but which perhaps also alludes to an almost Talmudic tendency to dissect information and look at it from any number of perspectives. That meticulous approach toward content is addressed directly in some of the interstitial interviews and talking head segments in Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. There are a number of anecdotes relayed, including some by Cohen himself, about the care he took in crafting various songs, some of which took him years to complete. That dedication to craft is obviously held in high esteem by many of the musicians who contribute not just performances to the concert sections of the documentary, but in the commentaries in between the tunes. The aforementioned religiosity of Cohen’s work is obviously felt by some of these folks, including U2’s The Edge, who calls Cohen’s songs “Biblical”.

As I mentioned in my Leonard Cohen: Songs from the Road Blu-ray review, Cohen comes off in that piece as remarkably affable despite his reputation for being something of a hermit, a tendency that’s also on display in his reminiscences scattered throughout Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. While gossip hounds may flock to his brief descriptions of icons like Janis Joplin, some of his more heartfelt memories deal with his childhood, and there are a couple of funny references to his evidently very typical Jewish mother.

The musical segments (often interrupted by comments) are a rather odd lot, and for one reason or another, several of the arrangements come off as Kurt Weill-esque cabaret tunes. It’s not necessarily a bad decision, just a kind of strange one at times. Both Rufus and Martha Wainwright are on hand, as are Beth Orton, Kate and Anna McGarrigle (Kate is the Wainwrights’ mother), Jarvis Cocker and U2, among others. The concert segments might have had more impact if they had been allowed to play out uninterrupted, but they at least provide ample evidence of how evocative and varied Cohen’s songwriting output really was.

I personally wish director Lian Lunson had opted for fewer bells and whistles with regard to some of the Cohen interview segments, many of which are colored (both figuratively and literally) with a kind of quasi-hallucinogenic ambience, both in terms of visual presentation and audio tweaks like echoes. Some of the other segments are much more straightforward, and Hal Willner, whose Came So Far For Beauty retrospective is credited as having inspired this documentary, has some of the most heartfelt commentary next to that of Cohen himself.

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1 (though eagle eyed viewers will notice there are occasional mere slivers of blackness at the sides of the frame). This is a somewhat variable looking enterprise, and not merely due to the fact that it's been cobbled together from a wide variety of sources. Even some of the contemporary material varies rather widely in sharpness and clarity (contrast the shot of Hal Willner in screenshot 7 with the one of him in screenshot 3, for just one example of the wide variances on display). There are also some odd if transitory issues with image instability, with some of the contemporary material having "the jitters" or other anomalies that almost resemble upscaling at times. The archival material is easier to understand in terms of its less appealing video qualities, with things like old home movies looking soft, grainy and in some cases damaged. There's nothing unwatchable here, and in fact a lot of the concert feature offers good detail levels and solid black levels, but this isn't the most consistent video presentation.

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is appealing, but surround activity is often inconsistent due to the fact that the performances can tend to be interrupted by talking head segments, parts of the documentary that are probably unavoidably anchored front and center. As noted above, Lunson likes to tweak the audio in some of Cohen's memory segments, and the echo-ey ambience does tend to waft around the side channels at least a bit. Fidelity is fine, and while some would probably prefer uninterrupted and/or unedited performances, the music sounds great, with excellent clarity and good separation.

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Lian Lunson is decent if hardly revelatory, with Lunson confessing up front that she's never done a commentary track before and that people need to bear with her. A lot of her comments are along the lines of compliments for the various performers, but she gets into a little bit of the nuts and bolts of assembling the piece.


• A Conversation with Leonard Cohen (480i; 3:58) is a brief snippet from what looks like the same session that provided the rest of the Cohen comments in the main documentary, with Cohen opining on things like the versions of his songs in the main feature.


• Additional Performances

  "Tonight Will Be Fine" performed by Teddy Thompson (480i; 4:20)

  "Famous Blue Raincoat" performed by The Handsome Family (480i; 5:11)

  "Bird on a Wire" performed by Perla Batalla (480i; 6:37)

  "Tower of Song" performed by Martha Wainwright (480i; 3:28)

• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:20)

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man serves as a fine if flawed elegy for one of the more remarkable poet philosophers of our era. The concert sections offer some sometimes outré arrangements and/or performances, but the biggest complaint some will have is that director Lian Lunson interrupts those performances with talking head segments. Those segments vary in insightfulness as well, but Cohen is beautifully self reflective, often quite self deprecating and perhaps unavoidably rabbinic in his own sweet way. Recommended.