Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love review: Too wrapped up in the old obsessions with male genius

Dir: Nick Broomfield. Featuring: Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen, Judy Collins, Helle Goldman and Richard Vick. 12A, 102 mins

A little after the death of Marianne Ihlen, the woman who inspired Leonard Cohen’s 1967 track “So Long, Marianne”, a letter was circulated by the media. It was authored by the musician, who had written to his old love, now on her deathbed: “Dearest Marianne, I’m just a little behind you.” Ihlen died in July of 2016. Cohen followed just three months later. It’s this moment of bittersweet romance that frames Nick Broomfield’s latest documentary, Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love. Yet, while we may expect to be presented with a love story for the ages, in truth, Bloomfield’s approach is too wrapped up in the old obsessions with male genius and the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle to really give Ihlen her dues.

The pair first met on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960, which by then had become a hub for wealthy bohemians, populated by artists and intellects of all breeds. They shared an instant attraction and soon settled into a tidy routine of artist and muse. Cohen, by this point, had not yet stumbled into a career in music, but was a frustrated novelist. He’d write a handful of pages a day of his novel Beautiful Losers, usually while high on acid, as Ihlen brought him sandwiches. “I was his Greek muse, who sat at his feet,” Ihlen, in an archive recording, recalls.

However, Cohen grew frustrated with his lack of success (the press called Beautiful Losers “the most revolting book ever written in Canada”) and left Ihlen to travel to New York. It was there he discovered the burgeoning folk scene and – after playing “Suzanne” for Judy Collins, who insisted he recorded it – hit his creative stride. But his climb to the stratosphere was also a death sentence for his relationship with Ihlen, as he became more and more entranced by the hedonism that surrounded him. She moved to New York to be with him, all while he sang about Janis Joplin “giving me head on the unmade bed” in “Chelsea Hotel #2”. But, here, the documentary drifts further and further away from Ihlen, distracted by the standard biographical points of Cohen’s life: his collaboration with Phil Spector on Death of a Ladies’ Man, the writing of “Hallelujah”, his drug-fuelled antics on tour, and even his stay at a monastery in the 1990s.

What’s particularly frustrating about Marianne & Leonard is that it skates around the most insightful aspect of this story, as Broomfield begins to dissect the realities of the “free love” movement of the 1960s and its effects, suggesting that polyamory had been adopted as a norm by people who didn’t fully understand what it entailed, in a way that made them vulnerable to heartbreak and humiliation. The island of Hydra, meanwhile, is painted as a beautiful, intoxicating place that destroyed all inhibitions, leaving some of its inhabitants “irreparably damaged” by the experience. Children were neglected by their parents, or even had their drinks spiked. Ihlen’s own son Axel, it’s mentioned, spent much of his life in psychiatric hospitals.

Yet, Marianne & Leonard lacks the necessary sense of introspection needed to explore these themes in full. It may have a lot to do with who’s behind it. Broomfield is notorious for inserting himself in his work, as he did in his infamous 1998 documentary Kurt and Courtney, and though he doesn’t appear onscreen here (outside of a few old photographs), he mentions mere minutes into the film that he too was once one of Ihlen’s lovers. His interactions with her consistently crop up, including when she visited him in his “chic squat” in London, but they add nothing to her story. They’re all just a big boast.

It also colours how he sees Ihlen. When he talks exclusively about her “smile and enthusiasm”, her gentle presence, and the way she’d encourage all those around her, he only further reduces her to the image of a living muse. Perhaps it was just too tempting, considering even Ihlen dismissed herself in this way. Broomfield often returns often to the same piece of footage, shot by DA Pennebaker in the 1960s, of her against the Greek sun, the wind softly playing with her hair. It’s excessively idyllic and, in the sections about Ihlen’s time away from Cohen, the music is dutifully sad and wistful. It’s as if the film wants you to think of Ihlen as Penelope, waiting faithfully for Odysseus to sail home.

Meanwhile, Broomfield delights in reciting the dizzying creative and personal highs of Cohen’s career, as he travelled the world with a different woman on his arm every night – the director’s too enamoured with the music god to ever be too critical of his actions. Marianne & Leonard sees him shape Ihlen and Cohen’s romance into something that suits his own whims, but never do we learn how it felt to be the woman to whom Cohen would say “so long” every night on stage.

Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is released in UK cinemas on 26 July