Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man

This film is a documentary about an historic tribute to Leonard Cohen, one of modern culture’s greatest poets and humanists. The tribute, organized by music producer Hal Willner, was performed at the Sydney Opera House. The performers who gathered to pay homage to Mr. Cohen are featured in behind-the-scenes interviews and in performance of their favorite Cohen songs.

You’ll enjoy this mostly musical documentary if you know and love Leonard Cohen’s work, especially his songs—by heart. His lyrics are thoughtful and deep. Unfortunately the singers are unable to clearly enunciate more than a few of them. Because I had never heard of Leonard Cohen or his music, I struggled to understand a lot of the lyrics. While the music itself is arranged and performed most admirably by an accomplished back up band, I think the performance took place after the ‘after’ party. The singers appeared to be inebriated. The film’s music is a tiresome form of manipulation, overly schmaltzy and sappy. Now I remember why I never liked folk music. Leonard Cohen, go back on tour! With U2!

Nonetheless, Leonard Cohen is among the rarest of poets, a self-effacing and humble guy who just happens to be able to speak simply and clearly—contrary to folk singers—yet profoundly about life. Artists from U2 to Mel Gibson talk almost reverently about him. Mr. Cohen, of course, in his self-deprecating way, is surprised by his celebrity. As a poet he has few peers. His keen sense of self is what makes him so popular, I believe. He is aware of his foibles and faults. He is just so damn good at writing about them that his devotees soak up every word. They think him a sage and a sort of Rabbi.

But he makes an honest comparison between himself and his American counterparts from the 60s Beat / hippie generation. He said these Americans had a sense of destiny, that they could change the world. They knew there was money to be made if one were the right kind of radical. But Leonard Cohen did not share such ambitions or grandiose self-centeredness. He says: “You are not the hero of your own drama. It’s not your work.� He ascribes to us all a mission, a calling.

Be faithful.

All the artists called him a truth seeker, a sage, even a prophet. Bono loves him, so he must be great. But I have never heard someone so universally revered say so many non-committal statements about eternal things. Mr. Cohen is very observant of human frailty and one of the best I’ve heard in describing it. But when it comes to eternal truth, he has no comment. Or more precisely he seems to know but doesn’t say. The bulk of his work suggests God is there. “That’s what the cracks [of life] are for, to let the light in� (from “Anthem�). I get the impression that, for Cohen, seeking the truth is the end game. Finding it would ruin the ride.

Perhaps his observations regarding this life, rather than the next, are the most important to his fans anyway. Leonard Cohen’s tour de force is describing how miserable and comical life can be. No one I have heard or read can paint a picture of our human tendency to vacuity better than he. That’s probably why he appeals to materialistic hippie holdovers and cultural mavens. But life isn’t meaningless and Mr. Cohen gives us a glimpse of that fact. His is not a life of strict self-loathing. He is a very spiritual man.

He has hope. There is no question he enjoys Scripture (he’s Jewish) and the Torah makes his “spine tingle.� No doubt the truth of Scripture informs his art. He speaks truth. His credentials as a searcher are impeccable. He’s an insightful and refreshingly humble man. Perhaps I would have liked him even more had I been able to hear more from him, instead of his disciples. But seeing his wide appeal makes him a bigger man. The impression Cohen made on the musicians and poets who put this tribute together is as eloquent as Leonard Cohen himself. He moves them to contemplate God.

So Leonard Cohen, I’m Your Man is the best and most ancient form of biography—I was introduced to a man worth knowing!

Tokyo Drift

I’ve never seen a Fast and Furious movie. This one I couldn’t miss. I don’t mean because it is such an event that to miss it would be a travesty. (But it is visually stunning.) What I mean is, I couldn’t miss the action. It is very—ahem—fast and furious. Beauty fills the screen from the very outset: beautiful girls, beautiful cars, and beautiful colors. It is probably the brightest live-action film I’ve seen. The races are beautifully, if not perfectly, choreographed. There is a musical quality to the drift races. I thought this film a bit like a Japanese version of West Side Story, with overhead cams.

There is no motivation for all the racing that I can see. Existence as portrayed in this movie is one of limitless resources spent on doing nothing but building fast cars—in unbelievable super-garages which any NASCAR fan would envy. Why build fast cars? “Well, so you can go fast.� Why would you want to go fast? “Well silly, so you can win races.� Why do you race? “Don’t make me mad or I’ll race you!� Why is winning so important? “It shows you are the best.� I’m not kidding; that’s it!

These races involve drifting: A method of racing developing in Japan for maximizing speed on twisty hillside roads. Drifting is a fancy word for ripping the rubber off of your tires while going around a corner. It is an artistic way of applying the emergency brake, and accelerating to maximize the centrifugal force of the car to carry you around a corner at a very high speed. It is a beautiful thing to watch. It can tear all of the cool plastic add-on stuff from the car body too, but helps you win races. What does the winner of the race get? I don’t know. But, cheering, clapping, stunningly pretty girls come up and stand next to you to rub their bodies on your car. Does it get any better than that?

Well in a word, no. It doesn’t get any better than that. That’s about all there is to the basic plot. The story is about nothing. It is kind of a Seinfeld movie on nitrous oxide. A lot of cash changes hands. How this cash comes into the hands of twenty-year-old Japanese men is not really adequately explained. The good thing about these cash transactions is that they always seem to spark another race. In fact, any emotion above that of a mud flap sparks a new race. New races are the reason for the film. There just doesn’t appear to be any reason for the races.

Tokyo Drift is a film of mumbling, bad-ass, bored, rich, quasi-mafioso-type young men with really bad attitudes, pretty good accents, and terrific looks. They look really mean when they have to. They act really tough. They look as though they may pick a race with you at any moment. And sure enough, they do. In Tokyo Drift, a race breaks out every twelve minutes. (This film was not shot in real time.)

In the case of Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, lots of racing is a good thing, mainly because the dialogue leaves something to be desired. As hard as it is to understand, due to mumbling, it is not really worth hearing anyway. Several scenes have a bit of Japanese with subtitles. I found myself wishing the entire movie had them. I enjoy listening to the spoken Japanese dialogue as it sounds exotic and lyrical. But English-speaking actors delivered their lines with too shallow a breath. Many times the mumbling gradually disappeared before the sentence was cmmmmm.

One exception to the diction problem was the character of Sean Boswell (Lucas Black), whose Southern accent sounded downright articulate. But, no one goes to Fast and Furious movies for diction. It is for the chicks, guys, cars, monster garages, and stylized driving. This is a guy flick with lots of chicks who don’t say much. Neela (Nathalie Kelley) is stupefyingly gorgeous—and a clear speaker. She stands out in a cast of stunningly beautiful women but has little to say. Han (Sung Kang) is a lovable character. His is the character that is the most endearing. He is giving, large of heart, wise, and drifts for tangible reasons. Chicks. You guessed it, beautiful chicks!

Was there a spiritual lesson in Tokyo Drift? I believe there was. It can be found without a lot of work. The drifters have nothing to live for but racing. They grow-up, become adults, and live their lives with nothing else to do. (Except pick races with each other.) They pursue the victory in a race against time, and each other. The inevitable conclusion is: it is empty. “All is vanity,� as the Preacher in Ecclesiastes says. The emptiness of life with out God is profound. Lives without knowledge of someone greater than us will often spin out of control. I may look great on the outside, but inside I am empty. I am drifting.

Tokyo Drift is actually a fun movie. It does not challenge you. It is delightful to watch. The drift racing is exciting and almost moving to see. The film goes by pretty quickly and has some surprises near the end. Again, you will not see many more visually stunning movies this year.

There may also be a practical lesson in Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. Perhaps instead of war, we could race each other?!

A Prairie Home Companion

Based on the National Public Radio drama of the same title, this well-done movie is an actual performance of the award-winning radio show, watermarked with backstage banter and drama. There is something wholesome and unapologetic about A Prairie Home Companion, particularly in its middle-American humor, morality, and spirituality. In Minneapolis you can stand on a public stage and sing songs about Jesus and America. The audience consists of atheists, Catholics, Protestants and anything else that winds its way through those ideologies, but the radio show today—as over its 30-year history—is just plain good ol’ entertainment, for which everyone applauds their approval. Strongly appealing and effective, this story is the successful blending of radio and cinema—we delightfully witness how a good old yarn can be told on the screen. The beauty of cinema is its visual artistry and real-time urgency; radio is powerful as it couples the dimensions of a story with the listeners’ imagination. These elements are mixed with great success in A Prairie Home Companion and, as an audience, we are all the more beguiled by it.

Garrison Keillor—a master storyteller and a lovable character who is quintessentially American—has written a screenplay with all of his best trademark elements in place. The film creates a sense of easy pleasure in its slow pace. It feels genuine and humble. There is no expectation of surprise or suspense (aside from the occasional question as to who knows about the demise of the show and who doesn’t), though there is a full-bodied backstory, or perhaps a woven tapestry of numerous backstories. For the virtuoso of storytelling, A Prairie Home Companion is the prefect vehicle to showcase Keillor’s seemingly limitless genius for narrative. As the curtain rises for the radio show itself (wherein the stories are told), the cast is busy telling stories to each other. Every member is teeming with stories—not wild, outrageous yarns, but everyday stories that fascinate by their very homey-ness and the way in which they carry the “on air� show. This backstory about friends, friends of friends, common acquaintances, and village idiots is the foundation upon which the movie is built.

Pacing the film like a radio show allows time to laugh at the many jokes in turn, rather than the all-too-common inundation of non-stop one liners that often proves hectic. Featuring local talent on the real radio show fosters the “in-your –living-room� feeling, which stays intact throughout the film. For this reason the show has little pretense but great entertainment value—entertainment made all the more valuable by the stupendously accomplished cast: Merryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Woody Harrelson, and Lily Tomlin among talented others. It was refreshing to see some of these seasoned and brilliant actors portraying regular, everyday, plain-spoken and average looking people. Their performances, as usual, were powerful. Meryl Streep, for one, is absolutely formidable. She may not be young anymore, but no one commands attention like she can. But the strong individual performances merely made it an outstanding ensemble production.

The relationships that have developed between cast members over the years are long-term but strained because of a singular effort—namely, the performances of the always-popular radio show A Prairie Home Companion. Sharing grief and joy over 30 years with friends and co-workers will, by default, create a bond. But it hasn’t been a strong bond. Perhaps it could be described as a tolerable bond. However, I was touched most deeply by these people as I watched them try to come to grips with the finality of their “careers� and possibly their friendships. I was struck by the thought of how we in America’s cities try so hard to become a community while simultaneously shutting each other out through various technological advances. We have our i-Pods, radios, and CD players, all with personal listening earpods to help us cope with one another. I ride the bus to work sometimes and I’ve noticed that a certain camaraderie has developed between many of the “regulars.� It’s fun to watch. But then I question, Has this cast of commuters become friendly because of the forced closeness of commuting? Would they die for each other? Would the cast of A Prairie Home Companion die for each other? Would I sacrifice for my friends? The cast is drawn somewhat closer, or at least caused to become more conscious of each other, by the interestingly timed death of a long-time fellow cast member. It’s a powerfully poignant moment with more than one obvious meaning. (I don’t like to divulge too much of the plot of the movie, so I’m being deliberately elusive.) It was so moving and thought-provoking that I found myself wondering, Will my friends regret my passing? Would I stop my life long enough for self-examination of my path? Will I ever pour myself into my friends? And most importantly to me: How many tragic reference points do I need for God to get my attention? It is an important message to convey.

I believe this is a performance for the record books: memorable characters, superb storyline, and unmatched dialogue. I am a junkie for movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s—I love the gay banter and clever writing. On my blog I mention my love of the Thin Man series, and I certainly felt this movie approached that level of writing. Soooo clever! And, just for fun, ask yourself this question: How many movies tell you what’s going to happen in the first scene, yet you still enjoy it? Um, well, one… A Prairie Home Companion. It was refreshing to see a movie that captures imagination, heightens interest, and doesn’t offend my intelligence, simply through its dialogue. Lively repartee is back! Bravo Garrison Keillor. Hooray Meryl Streep. Thank you Kevin Kline. Cheers! Woody Harrelson… I can’t go on; it’s great!