It's easy to think Leonard Cohen simply objectified Marianne Ilhen, but that neglects the existence of real love between the two. A review of the documentary Marianne and Leonard
and Marianne Ilhen—where Ilhen floats on her back in the Greek sea, straw-colored hair and languid body illuminated by the sun, as Cohen’s voiceover recites a poem in the background. She appears inseparable from the light in the shot, as though if she left the frame she would take its warmth with her. This is the image of a muse: an unspeaking woman’s beauty, narrated by a great male artist’s voice. It is his project to subsume himself in her vitality, and to derive art from that.
His misogyny, if we want to call it that, is the benevolent kind: glorifying women such so that they become unreal.is, did Cohen exploit her? The film feels like it’s meant to be an ethical dilemma, or an ethical corrective, perhaps, as Broomfield seems to think he’s finally giving Ilhen her due: putting her name first in the title, telling her story.
What I might find repulsive in another man—an obsession with younger women—I find endearing in Leonard Cohen, probably because he writes desire better than anyone. As a teenager, I wanted to be a muse because I so badly wanted to be desired. Intoxicating a person to the point where they would want to make art about me seemed like the height of desirability. I’m older now—27, two years older than Ilhen when they met—and being wanted no longer feels out of reach.
It is easy to watch this movie and think that Cohen simply objectified Marianne, in the sense that he treated her as an art object, or an art-inspiration object, and not a person or partner. He dropped acid days in a row and wrote an incomprehensible novel on their island balcony while she brought him sandwiches and drinks. He left her for Montreal and then New York, and when he invited her to him, he would never let her fully into his other life.
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