Review of Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (2006) by Ellen P — 10 Apr 2008

What a disappointment. A critic wrote a review that went "Moments so beautiful, it brought me to tears." Well, this movie brought me to tears all right, I was bored to tears that is. Is this a documentary? Or a concert movie? Half of this movie, no exaggeration, are close-ups of second rate (with the exception of U2) performers defiling Cohen's songs.

The other half is old footage, new footage made to feel old (mostly Cohen walking about his home) and Bono going on and on about how he worships Cohen. There were a bits of pieces of clips of Cohen telling some stories, but the style is very plain.

Don't get me wrong, I love Cohen, but I didn't learn much about Cohen through this experience. I learned much more about him by spending 5 minutes on the Internet (youtube, wikipedia, etc). There is a lot of interesting things to say about Cohen, but this movie fails to convey any of these.

For instance, some of his best songs, "Bird on a Wire" and "Famous Blue Raincoat" (which aren't even mentioned here) were considered "unfinished" by Cohen. I would have liked to seen some of these interesting nuances examined, and I would liked to have heard Cohen's original versions sung by him as part of, shall I say it, a score to the movie.

And there is plenty of old concert footage, from when Cohen was in his prime, that could have been included in a chronological telling of his life and career. But this movie has no direction, little organization, and to say that this movie does an injustice to Cohen is an understatement.