Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song (2022, dir. Dan Geller, Dayna Goldfine, US) by Kymm Zuckert

“You look around and you see a world that cannot be made sense of. You either raise your fist or you say hallelujah. I try to do both.”

I’m sure there are a lot of people who will look at the title of this documentary and go, “Oh my God I’m so sick of that everlasting song,” and I’ve got to tell you, I don’t blame them, but they will be missing out on the story of an extraordinary life.

Leonard Cohen was one of the most distinctive and original artists to come out of the ‘60s, a decade where distinctive and original artists were pretty thick on the ground. He was a poet and novelist from a wealthy Jewish-Canadian family, and at the ripe old age of 30, became a folk musician. He wasn’t so much what you would call the possessor of a golden voice, which he made a joke of in one of his later songs, but he was an incredible songwriter, and he wrote them to fit his idiosyncratic bass-baritone.

As you may have guessed, the film isn’t only about the quite astounding saga of the song “Hallelujah”, it’s also about the ups and downs and trajectory of a man’s life who was unable to do anything but march to the beat of his own drummer, and the world managed to catch up to him. If anybody was going to be discovered after his death, it was Leonard Cohen, but instead he became a worldwide sensation in his 70s. His late 70s, even. Somehow, he even managed to avoid that cliché of the overlooked genius.

Now of course, there are many versions of the song “Hallelujah” in the documentary Hallelujah, but somehow you don’t get tired of it. The documentarians, Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, manage to play different bits and pieces of a many-versed song, by disparate artists in a multiplicity of styles, and instead of getting bored with repetition, the song grows wider and wider, until you can’t even see the edges. It is quite an accomplishment.

You don’t have to be a Leonard Cohen fan to watch this movie, though you probably shouldn’t walk in hating him, but you can walk in knowing nothing about his music beyond “Hallelujah”, (frankly, nobody is walking in without having heard that song once or twice), and just like with the wonderful documentary about the band Sparks, The Sparks Brothers, from last year, you can walk in a neophyte, and walk out an aficionado. As well you should.

Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog