The title of Nick Broomfield’s new documentary, Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, suggests that the film is a love story about Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, the Norwegian woman he romanced on the Greek island of Hydra in the early 1960s. At the very least, it hints at a film that spends equal time on Marianne and Leonard. Neither of which is the case. Instead, Broomfield’s film chooses to focus on Cohen as an author, as a lothario, as a musician and finally as an icon, all while relegating Ihlen to the nebulous role of “muse.”
There are many powerful moments in Marianne & Leonard, and the documentary’s best sections are spent exploring the actual relationship between Cohen and Ihlen. The two of them (along with Ihlen’s son from another marriage) had a brief but happy time together in Greece, where Ihlen supported Cohen while he worked on his poorly received novel Beautiful Losers. Not only do the accounts from friends, acquaintances and Broomfield himself (more on that in a bit) paint an idyllic if dysfunctional picture of the two young lovers, but the footage itself, much of Hydra in the ’60s, presents the bucolic locale as just the type of place where both love and artistry would have flourished with ease.
It’s Hydra though, that also opens the door for Broomfield to pursue the film’s less successful diversions. The first is the filmmaker’s own affair with Ihlen in Hydra, which while relevant in terms of his interest in the subject, commoditizes Ihlen’s affections. Ihlen becomes a kind of professional muse rather than a person with her own hopes, dreams and interests. Even interviews about her and with her own friends focus on her in the context of her relationships with men. At one point, it is said that, “[Marianne] was beautiful, but she didn’t enjoy being beautiful until she met Leonard.” Later, Ihlen’s friend Aviva Layton comments that,“If anyone should have had Leonard’s children, [Marianne] deserved to have them. But she didn’t, for Leonard’s sake.” And finally, a rather intrusive scene at Ihlen’s deathbed shows her reaction to a final letter from Cohen, who would die just months after her. It’s poignant but voyeuristic, and it also serves to make her final moments about Cohen.
Cohen, who is an appealing documentary subject for many of the reasons his music was so popular—namely his mastery of poetic language and his gravelly voice—is the true focus of Marianne & Leonard, and the fact that he and Broomfield shared a lover obviously delights the filmmaker. While Cohen is an endlessly interesting subject, his life and music have been extensively covered (check out Lian Lunson’s 2005 Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man for a more musical Cohen documentary), so Broomfield instead shines his light on Cohen’s romantic inclinations and also on the brief time he spent in Greece. The romantic portions are interesting, particularly Cohen’s own words about being lucky to have come of age at the height of “free love,” but this undermines any motivation Broomfield had of making Marianne & Leonard a love story. Hydra fares better as a subject, thanks to a surprising amount of footage (some acquired from documentary icon D.A. Pennebaker) of the island both in the ‘60s and today.
The insights into Cohen and the focus on Greece as a haven for artists in the mid-20th century serve to make Broomfield’s film an interesting and intriguing experience. But Broomfield’s inclusion of his own affair with Ihlen robs her of any role outside of that of mistress and muse. This is at odds with what little we see of Ihlen, who lived a long and interesting life outside of her brief romances with Cohen and Broomfield. Though Broomfield seems to think that the life of a muse is something to be aspired to, particularly for someone like Leonard Cohen, Ihlen was more than a muse and the film would have been stronger if it had explored more of that.
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