The story behind Cohen’s classic ballad “So Long, Marianne” is one that spans many years, from the masterful Montreal singer-songwriter’s beginnings to his death in 2016, AP notes in a recent feature.
In the early ’60s, Cohen was living far from his native Canada in a sun-kissed bohemia paradise on the Greek island of Hydra, taking acid, writing feverishly and falling in love with a young, blonde, warm-spirited Norwegian woman named Marianne Ihlen, who had a son from her first marriage to the writer Axel Jensen.
Their blissful romance came before fame found Cohen. When he turned from novel writing to music and eventually — coaxed by Judy Collins — singing his own songs, Cohen was catapulted far from Hydra island, signed to Columbia Records and hailed as a baritone-voiced sage. Among his first songs was an ode to Ihlen, “So Long, Marianne.” It wasn’t initially intended as an epitaph to his relationship with Ihlen but came to be one.
They continued together off-and-on for years, but gradually grew apart. Cohen, whose fifth studio album was titled “Death of a Ladies Man,” moved on to other places and other women. (Janis Joplin was among them.) Yet Cohen’s romance with Ihlen became mythic, a legend Cohen burnished, himself. He put her photograph on his second album and continued to talk reflectively about Ihlen on stage after their relationship disintegrated. Shortly before Ihlen died at 81 of leukemia in 2016, Cohen left her a tender message that soon-thereafter went viral.
“I’m just a little bit behind you, close enough to take your hand,” said Cohen. He died four months later.
“Marianne & Leonard” bookends its tale with that moment, and it sometimes stretches to fill the chapters in between. Since the film was made posthumously, neither of its principles were interviewed, leaving Broomfield to rely largely on secondhand sources. And Cohen and Ihlen’s connection, while obviously deep, feels less like a feature-length story than a short; a song, not an album.
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