Hallelujah: How a Nordic muse and a Greek island changed Leonard Cohen

It’s tempting to say that the world did not need another Leonard Cohen biopic. The English documentary maker Nick Broomfield made a fine film, Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, five years ago. Plenty else has been written about the great Canadian songwriter; Hallelujah has been played to death.

But visiting Hydra for the filming of So Long, Marianne, a new eight-part drama about Cohen’s time on the Greek island in the early ’60s, and his love affair with his lifelong muse, Marianne Ihlen, you see why Cohen continues to fascinate. Indeed, the story of So Long, Marianne is of the people he fascinated and those who fascinated him.

Alex Wolff as Leonard Cohen and Thea Sofie Loch Næss as Cohen’s lifelong muse Marianne in So Long, Marianne.Credit: Nikos Nikolopoulos

First among them were the Australian writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, the latter the author of the renowned novel My Brother Jack.

“George Johnston is probably not as well known as he should be outside of Australia,” says Noah Taylor, who plays him in So Long, Marianne. “He was a very prolific journalist, a war correspondent during the Second World War, and then he gave that away to pursue writing novels by himself, and also, unusually, in partnership with his wife, Charmian Clift, who’s an equally interesting writer – and who is probably not as well known as she should be outside of Australia, either.”

Taylor says he feels a personal connection to Johnston and My Brother Jack.

“It’s a really beautifully written book, and a vivid portrait of Melbourne at that time. I actually grew up in a lot of the areas he did, and my parents and my grandparents were journalists.”

Johnston wound up writing for The Times in London, but then while working in England he caught tuberculosis. He and Clift wanted to go somewhere cheap and warm to be able to do their own writing. They chose Hydra.

Alex Wolff and Thea Sofie Loch Naess in So Long, Marianne: Hydra hadn’t changed that much.Credit: Nikos Nikolopoulos

Clift and Johnston were among the first foreigners to relocate to the tiny Greek island, but they soon found themselves as de facto patrons for other writers and artists who came to Hydra looking to live cheaply and find their muse. Cohen arrived in 1960, to write and think and sing and drink. So Long, Marianne charts how he was taken in by Clift and Johnston and proceeded to meet Marianne Ihlen, then married to the Norwegian author Alex Jensen. Marianne and Leonard became lovers; we have Hydra and Marianne to thank for the Cohen songs So Long, Marianne, Bird on a Wire and Hey, that’s No Way to Say Goodbye.

Visiting Hydra last year for filming of So Long, Marianne, you could see both why it had to be filmed there – this is prime Cohen country, with many tourists taking the hour-long ferry from Athens just to find Cohen’s house in the hills or sit on “Leonard’s bench” looking back at the mainland. You could also see why filming there would be a nightmare.

“A bunch of times I felt, we can’t do it here,” says producer Glenn Lund. “Because it’s a small island, there are no cars [on Hydra, freight transportation is provided by donkey.] Also, it’s very expensive.”

Alex Wolff as Leonard Cohen in So Long, Marianne: Cohen arrived in Hydra to write and think and sing and drink.Credit: Nikos Nilolopoulos

Hydra, with its main port like a natural amphitheatre, is beautiful, but that means at times it can be overrun.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of tourists,” says Lund. “It looked like we would not be able to make it even until a few weeks before we started, because everything turned out to be more expensive because there are no options, no deals to negotiate. And then you have huge tourist boats coming in every single day, multiple times, for hours. They’re flooding the streets … and we’re trying to shut streets down to film. So we were so dependent on the island liking us when we first came … and they were really sceptical.”

With care and time Lund and director/writer Oystein Karlsen won over the locals. The effort, Lund says, was worth it.

“You can’t really recreate this place. And also for the actors to be in the real places where the story took place is priceless. Even if we’re not shooting in all the real houses, we’re shooting in some of the real houses, and they can go and visit. And there’s many people who still live here, who knew Leonard Cohen and knew Marianne. I think it gives a lot to the actors.”

The production was on Hydra for several months and living on the place where it happened – a place that hasn’t really changed that much since it happened – certainly inspired Alex Wolff in his portrayal of Cohen. While I was on Hydra he remained in character the entire time (including one interview where he insisted I interview him as Lenny and told me that he had new music on the way.)

Wolff is a talented musician himself. Before his acting breakthrough in Oppenheimer he was best known as one half of the Naked Brothers Band, the Nickelodeon musical comedy hit from 2007. He plays and sings in a virtual facsimile of Cohen. A scene I watched at the Douskos taverna, where Cohen is handed a guitar and plays The Stranger to a group including Clift, Johnston, the novelist Alex Jensen (Jonas Strand Gravli) and Marianne, was technically adroit and eerily convincing. One couple wandering by was so impressed by the mocked-up taverna that they asked for a table.

“I think, you know, you have to be in a little bit of an unsettled state in order to portray him in an accurate way,” said Wolff. This long in character on Hydra had certainly left him slightly unsettled.

If So Long, Marianne was just a recreation of Hydra at the time, however; if Wolff as Cohen was just a brilliant impersonation, there would once again be little point in just adding to the Cohen scholia.

“This is a love story,” says Karlsen, “but it’s not like an Instagram love story where everything is pretty. It’s fairly gritty. A mirror of what happens if you just give in to the fact that there are no rules.” And that love story, Karlsen says, should speak even to modern-day viewers who aren’t Cohen-philes: it is as much Marianne’s perspective as Cohen’s.

Norwegian actress Thea Sofie Loch Næss plays Marianne.

“My biggest job here is to tell her story with love and respect, but make sure that we do not fall into the trap that I’m just some blonde girl next to this amazing person who can sing and act and is incredible. It’s not a beautiful, linear love story. It’s super complicated, and they both make mistakes, but you see her journey a bit and understand maybe, hopefully, why it turned out the way it did.”

The anchor of reality away from the love story, however, is George Johnston and Charmian Clift. And it is no spoiler to say that their story does not end well.

“You’re talking about two Australians,” says Anna Torv, “that end up on a basically deserted island with no running water and nothing around. Part of the joy of Hydra was that you could be whoever you wanted to be here. You didn’t have to conform. And I think they had that joy in the beginning.”

Clift and Johnston were an intellectual match, lovers of culture and literature who fell apart while Leonard and Marianne flourished.

“You sit on this island for a little while and a few things started to happen,” says Torv. “They had three children. It was really rough. George was really ill. They were alcoholics – and their reality went dark.”

It adds an elegiac tinge to So, Long Marianne – a grace note of regret that is all, of course, very Leonard Cohen.

So Long, Marianne premieres on SBS On Demand on October 19.

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