It leads to a constant re-orientation as a viewer, not unlike what the band was trying to achieve through their music for listeners. Interviews will take up two-thirds of the frame, leaving the left part black, just because. It can be hard to wrap your brain around. And that’s just the beginning. For example, in the early part of the film, close-up footage of a subject like Lou Reed or John Cale being silent and nearly still loops on one half of the frame while archival footage unfolds on the other that details or accessorizes what's being heard in interview footage. He’s constantly shifting the frame size and location. There are still lengthy interview segments in Haynes’ film, but anyone who thought the director of “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” and “I’m Not There” would make a typical music doc clearly doesn’t know his work.įrom the beginning, Haynes attempts to make a piece of art that doesn’t just chronicle the history of The Velvet Underground but reflects their creative spirit. How do you tell the story of an avant garde band like The Velvet Underground in the traditional format of the bio-doc? The answer is, of course, that you make an avant garde documentary, one that captures a very unique band in a very unique way. I was less of a hardcore fan of Lou Reed and John Cale, and yet that didn’t detract at all from my enjoyment of Todd Haynes’ excellent “The Velvet Underground,” which will premiere on Apple TV+ next month. The film starts to drag a bit in the last half hour of a two-hour run time, but its still a rousing portrait of the power of expression, something that Leonard Cohen perfected more than most songwriters that ever lived. I loved the music history aspect of “Hallelujah” in that it doesn’t really exist without a line that can be drawn from Collins to Ratso Sloman to Bob Dylan to John Cale to Jeff Buckley to Brandi Carlisle and so on. The song has had life, changing and shifting depending on the time and the performer. Most of the covers over the years have even altered it further, taking part of the first version and part of the second-believe it or not, the “ Shrek” version which made the song popular for a new generation is its own hybrid, and often that is now one of the most-covered. And then, notoriously, revising it again, from its original recording, which bombed, to live shows where the song took on much different, sexual tone. There are stories from collaborators like Judy Collins, who speaks on hearing “Suzanne” for the first time, or mega-producer Clive Davis, who drops this gem: “No one walked in his path he didn’t walk in anybody else’s path.” The picture of Cohen that emerges early in the film is that of someone who was a respected elder right from the start, coming into his folk music scene older than a lot of his colleagues, and with a poetic view of the world.Ĭohen was also an obsessive perfectionist, and that feeds into the creation of “Hallelujah,” a song he worked on for years, reportedly revising over a hundred verses until it was just right. Geller and Goldfine actually take a while to get to “Hallelujah,” serving up a more traditional bio-doc for the first third of the film, striking a tone that feels gentle and intellectual like Cohen himself. Admittedly, I am a huge Cohen fan, so my take on this project could be a little biased, but I found it illuminating in how it pulls Cohen out of the songwriting shadows of his own making and details not only his process but his connections to the music world. Not only has it become one of the most beloved tunes of all time, but it has shifted and changed over the years, becoming a way to read not just Cohen’s career but the way he influenced the entire music industry. Most songs couldn’t carry the weight of a project like this one-“Hallelujah” isn’t like most songs. However, Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s film really uses Cohen’s masterpiece as the center of a journey through the life, loves, and work of one of the best songwriters of all time. To be fair, “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song” isn’t a traditional bio-doc in that it highlights a single piece of art more than the artist who made it.
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