Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song (2022) on Netflix

PG-1320221h 55mDocumentary Music

Leonard Cohen spends years writing and rewriting the hymn Hallelujah. The story follows his life and the song's path from his notebooks to the many artists who recorded it.

Watch on Netflix
Watch on Prime
Watch on NordVPN

Netflix4.1/5
IMDb7.6/101,704 votes
Rotten Tomatoes88%

Trailer

Plot summary

Built on Alan Light's 2012 book The Holy or the Broken, the documentary looks at Leonard Cohen's life and career through a single song. It begins with his early years in Montreal and moves through decades of writing, rewriting and erasing verses, drawing on his notebooks and journals, concert recordings, photographs and other archival material. Friends, collaborators and artists who recorded Hallelujah describe what the hymn has meant and the many forms it took in their hands. The film draws on more than a hundred hours of archival footage and audio, and on dozens of hours of new interviews. Cohen's spiritual search and his questions about the holiness and brokenness of life run beneath all of it.

Cast

Show all 15 cast

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song (2022)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Alan Light, a consulting producer on the film, warned that Leonard Cohen would never consent to an interview and that licensing would be the most complicated thing in their careers. Cohen approved the film within a week of the directors' proposal, before his 80th birthday, but licensing terms with Sony Music took about two years; shooting began in August 2016, months before Cohen's death.
Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine collected over 100 hours of archival footage and audio, plus another 60 or 70 hours of original interviews, and cut it all down into a film of less than two hours.
The documentary began at a summer 2014 dinner, when film historian David Thomson suggested to Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine that they make a film built around a single song; Goldfine settled on Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" within 10 minutes.