A Tale of Two Leonards
The stories we tell about ourselves are partial, fragmented. Bits and pieces of the past show up at the door of memory and ask to be included. Later, after we’re gone, someone will put together a highlight reel of wedding photos, smiling babies, pictures taken in front of the Louvre, the Bridge of Sighs. Every image selected, either in our own recollection or in the afterlife, is a choice, a form of editing. What gets filed and what gets tossed determine the arc of the story. Were we trying to get somewhere or were we trying to know the place we were already in? Were we trying to find ourselves or lose ourselves?
Because each of us is the editor of her own life, it should be obvious that when an artist extends that principle to the biography of a public person, the process is all about making choices about what to include, what to leave out, how to shape the life into a coherent work of art. Consider the two Leonards. In the last week, Netflix in its tinselly munificence, gave me “Maestro,” Bradley Cooper’s film about Leonard Bernstein, and “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song,” a 2022 documentary about the Montreal poet and songwriter. The Bernstein film has caused quite a furor on the internet as people weigh in on whether it emphasized the maestro’s marriage and sexual exploits at the expense of his musical genius. Some people were put off by the footage of his extramarital encounters with men as if this story somehow undermined the power of his music, as if his humanness interfered with his greatness as an artist. These people belong to the why-do-we-have-to-hear-about-that-who-cares-school. At least one person wanted to know why his wife got more air time than his lover. Everyone seemed to have a Lenny they wanted to protect. No one wanted to let Bradley Cooper have his own Lenny, a larger-than-life one-man band who wrote music, conducted music, and loved all his intimates extravagantly, if not according to the rules. All three of his children have endorsed this version of their famous father. “Maestro” does not claim to be the final statement on Bernstein, the person, nor is it an almanac of facts about his life, but an evocation, half in stylish tuxedo black and white, of the explosive energy of the man, passionate about sound, alive in a permanent state of yearning for recognition, for the possibility of inhabiting the rapture of the music, for love.
The Leonard Cohen piece, a much more conventional film composed primarily of concert clips, talking heads and scraps of interviews with Leonard, organizes around the life of his song “Hallelujah.” The gravelly-voiced poet-troubadour admits early in the film that he can’t sing and he can’t play the guitar. What’s he good at then? What’s he doing up there? He’s a prophet who wanders down from the north to give expression to our seeking, our bewilderment at the grief and joy we are given to carry in this life. Leonard (never Lenny) speaks openly about the Creator as if they came of age in the same neighborhood. He growls in kabbalistic metaphors, at one point talking about changing his first name to September which his rabbi explains is a reference to the Hebrew month of Elul, the time of soul emptying before the Jewish new year. “Hallelujah” takes us to Mt. Baldy where Leonard spent five years in a Zen center and then back out on tour after he gets ripped off by his manager and has to earn a living again. In the end, dressed in his signature dark suit and fedora, he speaks to the camera about the resolution of his yearning. It’s not because he’s found what he’s been looking for. It’s because he’s stopped looking. The yearning….to be seen, to be regarded as special, to be the apple of God’s eye…is over. You can hear the hallelujah in that.
Leonard Cohen died the day before Trump won in 2016. He was eighty-two and he’d had enough, or so people said. After years of marginal recognition, an acquired taste, never achieving pop star status, he had seen his unheralded song “Hallelujah” become an anthem for seekers and lovers. There is in Leonard a sense of acceptance. But with Bernstein, who was ten years younger when he died in 1990, there would never be enough. There could never be enough. At one point in “Maestro,” he comments on the difference between conducting and composing. In conducting, facing the New York Philharmonic with his back to a packed house, inducing the sound out of the violin section, inviting the clarinets, he floods the concert hall with his potency. He goes up there and makes it happen. Being a composer, he suggests, is an interior practice. The composer is alone with his demons and Bernstein’s demons were legion. He would never get enough of whatever he was looking for.
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Many Voices will appear on the last Sunday of each month and will feature contributions from the community of paid subscribers. In December, we look forward to a contribution from Carmen Victoria Rossi. Carmen, originally from Puerto Rico, now happily lives in Minneapolis, MN with her rescue dog Reyi. She does not consider herself a writer but loves the solitude, deep reflection and insights that writing offers, same applies to her long walks with Reyi. All subscribers are now welcome to read Many Voices posts. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support seventysomething, have access to the archives, and become a contributor to Many Voices. Your ideas are always welcome.
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Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from Amazon or your local bookseller.
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I’ve seen neither film, but your responses encourage me to see both. I also appreciated people’s comments and I assume their music must be delicious.
I saw both movies. I liked them both. I was interested in the grumbling I was hearing about Maestro. It seems some would like to have seen a different film. As my writer friend Wesley Brown says: if someone wants a different story than the one I’m telling, let them write it. I think the film has a strong screenplay, interesting narrative structure and terrific acting. Two things Felicia said especially resonate with me: when she tells Lenny that it’s exhausting to try to love someone who doesn’t love himself, and when she faults herself for her unhappiness. She takes responsibility for going into the marriage with her eyes wide open and accepted full responsibility for her heartbreak. That speech—so honest, so mature, so sad.