In Documentary 'Marianne & Leonard: Words Of Love,' Free Love Comes At A Cost
This "moving, sympathetic but ultimately frustrating tribute" to Marianne Ihlen inadvertently reveals the male gaze's narrow focus by defining this complicated woman as merely Cohen's passive muse.
, a warmly absorbing new documentary by British filmmaker Nick Broomfield, opens with an image of a beautiful young Norwegian woman steering a sailboat off the sun-soaked Greek island of Hydra. The footage, which was shot by famed documentarian and Broomfield mentor D.A. Pennebaker on a visit to the island in the 1960s, recurs from slightly different angles throughout the film. But Marianne Ihlen — an early lover of Leonard Cohen and the subject of several of his most famous songs including "So Long
