Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song

When it comes to Leonard Cohen’s 1984 song “Hallelujah,” most people fall into two camps: You’ve heard it via Jeff Buckley or via Shrek. If you’re part of that very small minority that my husband, a record store manager, falls into, then you heard it either via Bob Dylan’s cover or from Cohen himself. We get it, you’re super cool. I, and probably most Gen Xers, know it from Buckley’s 1994 cover. Younger folks know it from Shrek (either John Cale’s version from the film or the Rufus Wainwright re-recording on the soundtrack album). Whichever camp you fall into, it’s a song that almost everyone knows, but it’s also a song that most couldn’t tell you who wrote.

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song was inspired by Alan Light’s 2013 book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah,” and the documentary covers Cohen’s life pretty extensively though the early Nineties and then picks up again around his return to recording and touring in the early 2000s. The film delves into every aspect of Cohen’s “Hallelujah” – the amount of time it took to write the song, the meaning of the song, the different covers of the song, and just what did Cohen think about it.

Directors Geller and Goldfine (Something Ventured, Ballets Russes) must’ve realized at some point they’ve got too much good stuff on their hands, not just about the song “Hallelujah” but about Cohen himself. The documentary, which is supposed to be about the song, is half-filled with Cohen’s journey from his early days growing up in Quebec through to the early Nineties, when we finally reach the Jeff Buckley section. I don’t begrudge that first 45 minutes, I understand you need to see some of Cohen’s life to get you to the early Nineties, but if so much time is spent going over those decades, why not just make Cohen’s entire life your documentary? Make a separate doc on the song, lord knows there’s enough material on it. From talent shows, beauty pageants, and funerals, search “Hallelujah” on YouTube and see just how many videos there are. In Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song, it feels like two different docs were threaded together. As interesting as I found it, the film was trying to focus on two parts of a story when it needed to be just one.

The song itself is a powerful one, of that there is no doubt. Depending on the version, the singer, the listener, the mood … it takes on a different meaning for each person. I lost track of how many times I heard “Hallelujah” in the film. Every one of them was amazing. When the film was near the end, I thought to myself, “I made it through without getting emotional.” Cue k.d. lang singing the song during the Tower of Song: A Memorial Tribute to Leonard Cohen concert from 2017. Her voice is astonishing and, yes, she did make me cry.