April 25, 2006

Donald Brittain and Dan Owen, Ladies and Gentlmen, Mr. Leonard Cohen (1965). 78 min.

I'm home ill, and my first Netflix arrived.

Beautifully over-serious:

"In my journey, I know I am somewhere beyond the traveling pack of poets. I will remain here until I am sure what I am leaving."

With hindsight, we see the arrogance backed up with talent. This was filmed before Cohen became Leonard Cohen, songster. The footage of his readings shows him doing basically what amounts to stand-up routines to get the audience in the mood to hear his poems (let us not forget he was a fairly good poet). Crowd working, more poets should try that, seriously. Cohen reading Cohen, although it happens less than I wanted, is reason enough to check this out. We can chalk up the fact that the audience camera pans are always on attractive 20ish females (sometime bespectacled) to the times. When was the last time poetry was shot sexy? The commentary at the end is all early post-moderny: Cohen shot viewing himself pretending to be sleeping acknowledges his uber-privileged status. Are we making similar movies now about younger poets? Why not? This was a great watch.