HALLELUJAH: LEONARD COHEN, A JOURNEY, A SONG
dir. Daniel Geller, Dayna Goldfine, USA 2021, 115'
“People
have been singing Hallelujah for thousands of years, to confirm our little
journey here,” says the legendary Canadian singer and poet Leonard Cohen at the
beginning of this portrait, which centers on his best-known and most-covered
song, “Hallelujah.” The film is made up of previously unseen archive material
from concerts, radio and TV interviews with Cohen himself, and conversations
with people who played an important role in his life and the (re)creation of
the song.
The various
chapters are devoted to the development of Cohen’s career and the origins of
“Hallelujah.” Cohen worked on the song for seven years, eventually putting more
than 150 verses on paper. Due to an uncooperative record label boss, the song
quietly flopped when it was originally released. But covers by a long line of
other artists—like the legendary version by Jeff Buckley and the rendition by
Rufus Wainwright for the soundtrack of the animated movie "Shrek"—rightly revived
the song in all its glory.
