There is a tendency to view artists as a breed apart - as a different species attuned to a higher, purer frequency, privy to insight and wisdom that eludes the everyday person. And that may be true to some degree, but it may also be the case that people who feel compelled to pursue and express what they view as a higher truth can do so to the detriment of themselves and those around them. Creativity doesn’t come without its casualties.
So Long, Marianne, the eight-part series dramatising the relationship between Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and his Norwegian muse Marianne Ihlen, doesn’t shy away from the emotional collateral damage that can be sustained when one commits to an artistic life – or exists within the blast radius of someone who does.
Alex Wolff as Leonard Cohen. Credit: Nikos Nikolopoulos
However, it would be selling this thoughtful, tender drama short to focus on that aspect of it. So Long, Marianne does wear its melancholia on its sleeve - it does have Cohen, synonymous for a particular type of world-weary malaise, at its centre, after all - and its gallery of characters do on occasion run the gamut from self-obsessed to self-loathing, but running through its veins is the joy of being inspired, whether it is by a drive to escape, a desire to evolve, a new place to call home, a new person to call your own.
The latter is what Marianne provides for Leonard as So Long, Marianne progresses, but writer-director Oysten Karlsen is not only careful but deliberate in ensuring that Marianne is more than just a muse but a fully fleshed-out human being - as much a seeker and creator as Leonard, her insecure, unfaithful husband Axel or any other member of their bohemian cohort on the Greek island of Hydra in the early 1960s.
Marianne (Thea Sofie Loch Naess) on the island of Hydra. Credit: nikos nikolopoulos
Both Marianne (played by Thea Sofie Loch Naess) and Leonard (Alex Wolff) have come to Hydra in search of a place to learn and become who they truly are - Marianne fleeing a stifling home life in Norway as the wife of aspiring novelist Axel (Jonas Strand Gravli), Leonard a writer escaping the drudgery of a nine-to-five existence working at his uncle’s garment business and wrestling with depression and despair.
This isolated Greek idyll would appear to be the perfect place to find one’s self - the first person Leonard encounters upon disembarking from the ferry is Australian writer Charmian Clift (Anna Torv, beautifully conveying the joys and frustrations of an unconventional life), who takes a shine to the young man and informs him that on Hydra “all the foreigners are painters or writers” and offers him a room rent-free in the house she shares with her husband George Johnston (Noah Taylor, inspired casting), author of the classic novel My Brother Jack. (Leonard would remain indebted to them: he dedicated his 1980 Sydney concert to the couple, “who taught me how to write”.)
Anna Torv as Charmian Clift. Credit: Nikos Nikolopoulos
For Marianne, however, Hydra would be less of a paradise. Even though she and Axel become parents to a son, Axel reveals himself to be neglectful, condescending and almost chronically unfaithful - indeed, he’s not above having an affair with a nurse in the hospital where Marianne is recuperating from appendicitis. It’s little wonder that after a scalding breakup - in which Marianne deploys a vicious insult to Axel, accusing him of possessing a “tiny emotional register” - she finds solace in the company of Leonard, who is about as self-involved as any other artist in the community but also possesses a generosity of spirit, a genuine affection for women and a longing for love. (“I get the feeling I pursue love like a serial murderer,” Leonard opines during one of his more self-indulgent moments, to which his more grounded friend Goran delightfully deadpans “Forget I asked.”)
The love that grows between them, with Leonard becoming something of a surrogate father to Marianne’s son, is a mutually nurturing and beneficial one, and it takes them as the years progress from Hydra to Oslo, Montreal and New York as Leonard sheds his old life of penniless poet and becomes…well, Leonard Cohen, with everything that entails.
Leonard (Alex Wolff) with Marianne (Thea Sofie Loch Naess) and Marianne's son Axel. Credit: Nikos Nikolopoulos
So Long, Marianne delicately, poetically shows the lingering effects the two had on one another many years down the line. (In as she was on her deathbed in 2016, he wrote “Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that.” Marianne died in July that year, Leonard a few months later.)
While writer-director Karsten’s respect and reverence for Leonard, Marianne, their relationship and the milieu that created it is evident, it doesn’t mean he soft-pedals the messiness and complexity of it all (even Axel, for all his flaws, is presented as frustrated by what he perceives as his wife’s aimlessness). Similarly, Wolff and Loch Naess are clearly enamoured of the people they’re portraying - Wolff wearing Leonard’s soulfulness like a second skin, Loch Naess glowing with Marianne’s great capacity for love and joy - but they’re unafraid of digging beneath the surface to show they’re human beings with jagged edges.
Few biopics are definitive - more often than not, they provide a primer on their subject or act as a gateway drug to pique one’s interest. There is of course more of the lives of Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen than is presented in So Long, Marianne - and much has been written about both over the years - but as a clear-eyed tribute to a relationship so rich in meaning, and a time and place where the creation of art was a valuable, meritorious pursuit, this is a lovely piece of work.
All episodes of So Long, Marianne will be streaming at SBS On Demand from Saturday 19 October.
Stream free On Demand
So Long, Marianne
