The Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is a very deceptively-titled 101 min. documentary which Lenny fans and worshippers might want pass on, preferring to stay with the more public ‘printed’ legend.
It is, of course, a legend built on his poetry and songs, and especially the latter written back in the ’60s and ’70s, in the ’80s renaissance, and his miraculous rebirth in the 2000s as one of the top concert draws world-wide. The song catalogue, in particular, is shorter than Dylan’s, but with as many beloved songs overall, from “Suzanne” to “Hallelujah”.
Lenny is loved, especially by women fans–who have traditionally outnumbered male fans–for his views on love, romanticism, depression, and spirituality. He was consistently the biggest chick-magnet performer from the 1960s into the 2010s.
It was also generally known that he was ‘pro-women’ and had suffered in love and been a survivor of alcoholism and drug problems, as well as a victim of an unscrupulous girlfriend-manager who ripped him off for $7 million while he spent 6 years in a Mount Baldy monastery retreat, ‘drying out’.
The extent of those problems and his obsession with women (he was a long-time womanizer) are laid bare in what is more a documentary about him and his many failings in career and chauvinistic relationships. Marianne is only tangentially referred to, though there is more visual evidence about her here than ever before including her attending a later concert and listening to Lenny’s last letter read to her in bed as she died.
Her life, in short, was a major mess and she accomplished nothing of major social or cultural significance in her sad, pathetic, deluded life which included her other failed relationships and mishandling of her son Axel, who died majorly neglected. Cohen comes off as a messed-up cad who was on speed and acid when he wrote his incoherent second novel Beautiful Losers on Hydra in Greece. The first, lucky turning-point after that was when he met Judy Collins and she popularized his songs and encouraged his stage career. From that point, he saw less and less of Marianne and she aborted at least one of their children. Nothing terribly romantic about that.
Cohen also wrote about his intimacies with such women as Janis Joplin and finally got some comeuppance with his tyrannical wife Suzanne Elrod which he wrote about bitterly in the massively cynical Energy of Slaves poetry collection. People who knew and worked with him, including Irving Layton’s wife, his druggy guitarist-pal, his tour manager and his record producer, shed light on darker, previous unknown, unseen corners of Cohen’s obsessive and messy life, including the infamous Phil Spector album with the producer pointing a gun at Cohen’s head and telling him he loved him.
There is also some previously unseen concert footage and an episode about his performances for the mentally ill which are two more of many reasons to check out this video if you want to know more about Cohen, to see sides you never knew existed, and to gain a truer, rounder, more realistic picture of this highly-regarded writer-performer. In this, the documentary breaks new ground, but much of its is dysfunctional, sordid, unflattering, and even somewhat abusive.
So don’t expect a love story or a romantic movie about Lenny and Marianne. Expect to see her receive too little, pathetically too late in Cohen’s final letter to her. Expect to have a difficult time trying to find any positives about the couple, him, and her.
If you would prefer to hang on to the legend/s, give this too-long (by about 20 mins.) doc a big pass. The legend has long been widely printed and the fanbase will likely remain firm in any case. But if you do see this one, some of Lenny’s good will, doubtlessly, be interred with his bones for sure. Unvarnished truth vs. leave me with the legend are your choices.
…………………………………………………..
In passing, the documentary also presents a not-so-glorious depiction of 1960s life including pseudo-artists, free love, open marriage, male chauvinism, heavy drug abuse, child neglect, suicide, and a generational epidemic of messy relationships.