I used to think of a divine service or God in the word hallelujah, since New Year's Eve I think of Leonard Cohen. That afternoon I saw the film Hallelujah in that beautiful cinema at the IJ in Amsterdam, Eye. What a great movie.
The first time I hear Leonard Cohen's song is in the performance of John Cale, I think the best cover so far. In the film you can see and hear that many covers of Hallelujah have been sung, of which those of John Cale, Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright may be called the most famous. The last one sang this song in 2016 with a choir of 1500 singers.
There are two versions of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, the first one he worked on for seven years and of which someone in the film, who interviewed Leonard Cohen for a long time, estimates that there are 150 verses of them, and a later live version that is a lot naughtier. The first version of Cohen's song is about his love for God, the second version is about his love for a woman. The first version is recorded in about ten books, which have been preserved. Leonard Cohen is known for working on the lyrics he gets as a gift, they polish as it were. There is a funny anecdote, also seen in the film, that he and Bob Dylan meet and exchange how long they do about a song. Leonard Cohen does on average a year, Bob Dylan five minutes about a song.
In the film Leonard Cohen is interviewed extensively by various people and several friends, friends and musicians, producers and a record manager are present. The spectator gets a beautiful picture, especially of Leonard Cohen's musical life and a little insight into his private life. It provides beautiful insights into life, such as the search for the light, the truth or God that suddenly ceased because it resolved in nothingness and ended and is experienced as closed. Someone also notes, following the many questions Leonard Cohen gets about the meaning of his songs, that it is actually an insult to the artist to ask about the meaning of his work. The work speaks for itself.
A must I find this film, which is just running in the cinema here in the Netherlands, for anyone interested in music and spiritual matters. Let me rephrase this: "There is a crack (...) that is where the light gets in."
