Movie Review: Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love

Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Nick Broomfield.

 

Nick Broomfield’s Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is not like his other ampersand documentary (Kurt & Courtney and Biggie & Tupac), which dug into the deaths of famous musicians, and found a lot of conspiracy theories – some far more interesting than others. In fact, I ‘m not sure I knew that Broomfield was capable of making a film quite this gentle and thoughtful. He cannot fully resist inserting himself into the film of course – he never can – but it’s far more restrained than any of his other documentaries. His documentary is about the love story between Leonard Cohen and his girlfriend/muse Marianne Ihlen – a Norwegian woman Cohen met and fell in love with as poor, aspiring writer on the Greek island of Hydra in the 1960s – and was involved with for years and years, even after he became a drug and sex fueled rock star, who never met a drug he didn’t take or a woman he didn’t fuck. It many ways it’s a sad film – Marianne never really stopped loving Cohen, or at least, she could never fully escape. When you inspire one of Cohen’s best known songs – So Long Marianne (and Bird on a Wire for that matter) – and when Cohen continued to reference for years. It is about these two people – how Cohen thrived, and how Ihlen suffered – in part because being a muse can be nice, but it’s also lonely – and you don’t exactly get royalties.

 

Broomfield had a personal connection with Ihlen – they were friends, and for a brief time they were “lovers” as he informs us (too much information Nick!) – and he clearly has affection for the now passed Ihlen. The problem with a documentary like this though is that it’s so much easier to make a film about Cohen than it is about Ihlen. And so, much of the runtime is devoted to Cohen’s story – stuff you probably know fairly well. His early novels, before being taking under the wing of Judy Collins, and becoming a musician. How that career took off, how he took many drugs which fueled the chaos on the road, which was always full of women. His performance on the Isle of Wight. The horrible collaboration with Phil Specter – the comeback with Hallelujah. His time in a monastery – and then losing all his money, and having to go back on tour in his 70s because he had no money, etc. The chances are if you wanted to know all this about Leonard Cohen, you probably already did. I will say that as someone who has always liked Cohen’s music – but hasn’t really dug into biography that deeply, some of it was new to me – but a lot of it wasn’t. Still, the film is a treasure trove of archival footage of Cohen – and concert footage. And the film does a good job of putting some of these famous songs into context. I think the film does a good job of painting a portrait of Cohen – of what made him a genius writer, what made him an irresistible ladies man, and what made him more than a little bit of an asshole – who was impossible to be with. It is less perfect at painting a portrait of Ihlen – in large part of course because there isn’t the same kind of footage of her, and by the time Broomfield made the film she was dead (so was Cohen). So Broomfield has to rely on his own memories, and the interviews with those her knew her.

 

But what Broomfield really does succeed in doing in painting a portrait of Hydra in the 1960s – which was a crazy, drug and sex fueled place. When Cohen arrived in the 1960s, it was full of poor, starving artists – and you could live there for next to nothing. It was during this time when Cohen and Ihlen’s love was at its peak. They lived together with her young son Axel. Cohen sat in the son, and wrote his now legendary novel Beautiful Losers in a drug induced haze, with Ihlen supporting him the whole time. It was once he left, that the long, protracted end start. But as Broomfield makes clear, the aftermath of Hydra was felt by a lot of people who were there. The number of people who died after leaving of suicide or drugs is staggering. The children of these relationships often had trouble adjusting to the real world – including Ihlen’s own son, who has spent most of his adult life institutionalized. The film is a fairly damning portrait of the 1960s in general – a time in which some people like Cohen thrived, but many others did not. It is a far cry from the romanticization of the 1960s we see more often than not.

 

And then, in the final act, the film hits some emotional moments I didn’t quite see coming. Even if at the end of the movie, I’m still not entirely sure I know Ihlen – I have a feeling that is the way she wanted it. The film doesn’t go into too many details of her life after she left Hydra and returned to Norway – and that seems appropriate. We can argue if the scenes in the hospital with Marianne are appropriate or not – if they are an invasion of privacy – but it does seem like it wasn’t shot by Broomfield – but by those who knew and loved her, and shared it with him.

 

I do think the film is successful at least making us consider what it must be like to know someone like Leonard Cohen – to love him. Marianne wanted to be with Cohen – but as a friend says, you cannot be with Leonard. And that’s true. And so to love him is only going to end in heartbreak.

Classic Movie Review: Kurt & Courtney (1998) and Biggie & Tupac (2002)

Kurt & Courtney (1998)

Directed by: Nick Broomfield.

 

Biggie & Tupac (2002)

Directed by: Nick Broomfield.

 

Nick Broomfield is a talented documentary filmmaker – but a large part of him is also just a muckraking tabloid journalist who seems to enjoy taking on documentaries about famous people who don’t want to talk to him, and trying to figure out how to go about getting access. It’s a system that perhaps only Broomfield could pull off – since his films are always as much about their own making as they are their subjects, so even if he never gets anywhere, he still has a film to show. In 1998’s Kurt & Courtney and 2002’s Biggie & Tupac, Broomfield sets out to make two documentaries about the deaths of famous musicians – and whether there was a conspiracy involved in their deaths that implicate other famous people close to them. In Kurt & Courtney, he tries to unravel the truth behind Kurt Cobain’s suicide, and whether it was really murder – and whether his wife, Courtney Love, was involved in the plot to kill him. In Biggie & Tupac, he tries to figure out if Tupac’s murder was really an elaborate ruse perpetrated by Suge Knight – the head of Death Row Records, Tupac’s label, in an effort to avoid paying him millions in royalties, and then – 6 months later – killing Biggie Smalls to help build the narrative of East Coast vs. West Coast rap wars that would account for both murders. In both movies, Broomfield tries very hard to get to the truth – and ends up talking mainly to a bunch of people on the periphery of the lives of the dead superstars, all of whom have a lot to say – but not a whole lot of evidence to back any of it up. Yet even if, like me, you accept the standard explanations for these deaths – that Cobain killed himself (something, ultimately even Broomfield says he believes), and that a rival gang member that Tupac and Suge Knight beat up earlier in the same night Tupac was killed came back for retaliation (and was later, himself murdered in an unrelated gang fight) there is still value here (for the record, I don’t think anyone really knows what happened with Biggie Smalls’ murder) – there is value in Broomfield’s films – not least of which is entertainment value.

 

As a documentary filmmaker, Broomfield seemingly has no fear. He walks into any place, and will talk to anyone. In Aileen: The Selling of a Serial Killer, he walks in unannounced with his camera person and a boom mic into a sketchy looking biker bar, and walks out just fine. In Kurt & Courtney, he talks to various addicts and hangers-on – including a scary looking man named El Duce, who claims Courtney offered him $50,000 to kill Kurt. In Biggie & Tupac, he somehow convinces the prison where Suge Knight was serving time to let him in – even though Suge had no agreed to an interview – and then, amazingly, gets the interview anyway. He has less lucky with Courtney Love – although he does get a few words from her near the end of the film at an ACLU event (she clearly knows who he is – addressing him by his first name) – an event that Broomfield will eventually be thrown out of as he commandeers the mic, and openly questions why the ACLU invited Love as their speaker, considering how many times she has openly threatened reporters (allegations that are irrefutable). In Kurt & Courtney, he teams up with two people who call themselves members of the “stalkerazzi” – who say they know how to get questions to famous people – but the two are complete, bumbling idiots – and amateurs compared to Broomfield.

 

There is a pattern established in both of these films in which Broomfield finds someone who is on the fringes of the case, and goes to interview them. They always claim they have explosive information that is going to blow things wide open – they just cannot share it at this time. In Kurt & Courtney, they all seem to think Kurt was some sort of saint, and Courtney the bitch harpie who ruined his life – even Love’s own father. What’s fascinating in that film is that to a person, they all claim Courtney Love is some sort of greedy bitch after Kurt’s money – and then half of them try to hawk their own book on the subject. Oddly, Broomfield rarely calls any of them out on that – he certainly did in Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer -  although he does confront Love’s father, and asks him what kind of father would do what he’s doing to his daughter. It’s similar in Biggie & Tupac – he meets with various people who try to hawk their book or their music – everyone trying to cash in basically by their proximity to a famous person.

 

Yet both films have one sympathetic character in them as well. In Kurt & Courtney, that’s Kurt’s Aunt Mary – who doesn’t have an unkind word for anyone, and who will go on about Kurt lovingly for long periods of time – and started using Kurt’s life and death as an example to schoolkids. In Biggie & Tupac, it’s Biggie’s mother – who simply wants answers (out of the three famous musicians depicted, only Biggie’s music is in the films – the estates of Cobain and Tupac wouldn’t give up the rights). 

 

Ultimately, I think the value of both films is more in their depictions of those who surround rich an

d famous people than for any real insight into the deaths of the musicians involved. There is a lot of talk about conspiracies, but nothing that really, truly convinces of anything. No, the portrait painted of Courtney Love is far from flattering in Kurt & Courtney – but at worst, she’s portrayed as a gold digger who liked being famous, and took to it well (it should be noted that the film was made around the time of 1996’s The People vs. Larry Flynt – in which Love delivered an amazing performance, and seemingly had her life together – it didn’t last). And the portrait of Suge Knight isn’t nice either – but you don’t have to work too hard to make Suge Knight look violent, do you?

 

The two films are Broomfield’s best – they don’t rise to the level of either of his Aileen Wuornos docs or Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam (I think, it’s been years since I saw that one, but it was my favorite at the time – and in need or a re-visit) or Tales of the Grim Sleeper. But both are fascinating portraits of fame – and those who are attracted to it. I’m not sure they were quite the films Broomfield set out to make – but they’re good just the same.

Classic Movie Review: Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (2002) and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)

Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992)

Directed by: Nick Broomfield

Written by: Nick Broomfield.

 

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)

Directed by: Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill.

 

Documentarian Nick Broomfield’s two films about serial killer Aileen Wuornos – made a decade apart, the first as she is going through the legal process related to the seven murders she committed (you cannot really call them trials – she only had one, for one murder), and the second as the state of Florida prepares to execute her – are both fascinating films, about the same woman, and yet are also different from each other – or at least have a different perspective. Broomfield, unlike many documentarians, almost always ends up as one of his films major subjects – and the films are as much about how he made them as they are about the subject. This is particularly true of the first film – made in 1992 – as it takes until the final 15 minutes of the 85 minute film before Broomfield even gets to talk to Wuornos herself. Everything up until then is about the people surrounding Wuornos – in particular her lawyer, one of those sketchy guys who advertises on TV (he calls himself Dr. Legal) and Wuornos’ “adopted mother” – a woman of about the same age of Wuornos, who adopts her only after she has been arrested and charged with the murder.

 

The first 70 minutes of the film details, no so much Wuornos’ crimes (which the films never go into detail of), but of her life, how she was caught, the legal process around her, and how everyone she comes in contact with is trying to make money off of her. The second film, made in the months, weeks, days and even hours – leading up to Wuornos’ execution is much more about the woman herself. Broomfield has more access to her this time, and she’s freer to talk to him. You could criticize both films for being too sympathetic to Wuornos – which may explain why Broomfield doesn’t really detail what she did to her victims, although does allow her testimony on the stand of being raped by one of them to play out for minutes on end – but I think what both films clearly show is various breakdowns in the legal system. It’s not that Wuornos was innocent – she wasn’t, and even Broomfield, more sympathetic than most, doesn’t argue that – but that instead she was represented at her first trials by someone who clearly had no idea what he was doing, and gave her terrible legal advice (she will eventually plea “No Contest” to most of the murders – essentially a guilty plea – and yet her lawyer didn’t even attempt to work out a plea bargain for her). In the second film, Wuornos is quite clearly mentally deranged – paranoid and ranting about “sonic waves” being used to crush her head by prison officials. You cannot even argue that she’s trying to do that to spare her own life – to get her sentence commuted to life – as she does everything possible to speed up her execution, not slow it down.

 

Through the two films, Broomfield also does an excellent job of showing how Wuornos was abandoned or betrayed by practically everyone in her life. She is arrested because her lover – Tyria Moore – turns her in, and confesses when Moore makes a tearful plea for her to do so, just to ensure Moore herself doesn’t get into trouble for anything (the movie strongly implies, without outright saying, that Moore at the very least knew far more than she lets on – and perhaps was even involved in the crimes). The first film also shows her lawyer and her adopted mother, far more worried about negotiating their appearance fees than with Wuornos herself (Broomfield also niftily avoids criticism that he paid for interviews for the film – something many would frown on – by including it right in the film itself – he’s clearly not trying to hide anything). I have a feeling that although her lawyer – Steven Glazer – and adopted mother – Arelene Pralle -  know that Broomfield is filming everything as they greedily negotiate their fee, or crack jokes, etc. – that they never believed he would use the footage. After all, he’s there to make a film about a female serial killer, not this stuff. The pair of them come off as extremely greedy – or as Broomfield calls them “mercenary”. Glazer is in the second film – although he tells Broomfield to fuck off, and apparently blames Broomfield for him being “run out of town” (although oddly, not long after, they’re riding in a car together). Pralle, tellingly, isn’t in the second film – and apparently was no longer in Wuornos’ life by then.

 

By the time Wuornos herself shows up in the first film – apart from all the news footage – the film is almost over. While she rants about the media and the police – she also comes across as at the very least honest, and knows what her lawyer and adopted mother are doing to her – like everyone else, they’re out to make money off of her.

 

If the first film is mainly about the media firestorm, and how everyone around her tried to make money off of her, the second film is much more focused on Wuornos herself. No longer having to go through lawyers and family members, Broomfield has easier access to Wuornos herself. Whether it’s the years on death row that has done it to her, or she was always this way, she is clearly unhinged at times when speaking to Broomfield – her moods ranging wildly from one extreme to the next. She changes her story about being raped by her victims and how it was all self-defense – but then seems to contradict that when she thinks the camera isn’t on her. All she wants to do is talk about the cops and how, in her version, they let her do everything to turn her into a serial killer to make money. It’s in this film that Broomfield also digs deeper into Wuornos’ life as a child – her abusive childhood, living in the woods, the mother who abandoned her (he even interviews her). Wuornos herself believes that had she had a better childhood, she would have turned out differently – yet again, at other points she contradicts this.

 

Taken as a pair, the films represent a fascinating, yet still incomplete portrait of Wuornos  - strangely, drugs and

alcohol don’t really come up – even though she did both – and they undeniably had an impact on her. As well, a more complete film may have had more confidence to go into more of the details of her crimes – something I think Broomfield may be unwilling to do because he doesn’t want to jeopardize audience sympathy for her. But we do sympathize with her, even as her rants and behavior also make her incredibly scary – especially the rage in her eyes. No one should have to live the life that Wuornos did leading up to the crimes she committed – and even after she committed them, she also deserved competent defense (as the film points out, even Ted Bundy was offered life in prison by Florida – Wuornos wasn’t, but perhaps that’s because her lawyer didn’t even try for it), and in the end we have to wonder that even if you believe in the death penalty (I don’t), do you really want the State executing someone with Wuornos’ obvious mental problems? It is quite possible for someone to be guilty and screwed over by the system – and that seems to be the case here.

Note: I saw these two films around the same time that Patty Jenkins’ Monster – starring Charlize Theron in an Oscar winning role as Wuornos came out. I advise you to do the same, as it will certainly solidify that while I think Monster has some issues – Theron’s performance isn’t among them. It is a brilliant performance that captures Wuornos, and not just because of some skilled makeup work.