Become a Member
Life

Hallelujah! The inside story of a masterpiece

A new film celebrates Leonard Cohen’s classic song - and how it evolved from an obscure album track to an international anthem

September 18, 2022 11:40
Hallelujah photo 20
6 min read

When married filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine look at a potential subject for a documentary, they always ask themselves, “Do we know much about this subject?” says Goldfine over Zoom. “If the answer is ‘no’, then we’re more inclined to want to lean into it.”

The Emmy-winning duo can spend years making a film, and “part of the joy is the process of discovery”.

Their latest film, the expansive, seven-years-in-the-making Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, was no exception. They knew that Cohen had a Jewish background, but it was not until they started to do research that they realised how integral it was to the Canadian’s identity and to his work, and how “deeply Jewish” it meant the film was going to be.

Over coffee, Goldfine told Rabbi Mordecai Finley, Cohen’s rabbi for the last 15 years of his life, that people had always asked them, “When will you finally do a Jewish film?” “He looked at us,” she recalls, “and said, ‘Well, I think this is your first one.’”

It was unavoidable: the man and his faith were inseparable. When Cohen retreated to a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy, California, for six years, seemingly having hit a spiritual wall, people would ask him if he had left his heritage behind, says Goldfine. “He would say, ‘No, I’ve got a perfectly good religion. Being up here developing Zen practice does not negate my Judaism.’”

The idea for the documentary was planted when the directors’ friend, the film writer David Thompson, asked if they would ever consider doing a film about a song. They had never thought about making a music documentary before.

However, the couple had seen Cohen perform at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California, in 2009, when he was on the first of two multi-year legs of a “comeback tour”, and his performance of Hallelujah was seared into their memories.

They had heard Jeff Buckley’s sensual version of the song, but this was different, Geller remembers.

Topics:

Music

Film