69
Metascore
19 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 83TheWrapSteve PondTheWrapSteve PondAs befits its subjects, Marianne & Leonard is as much poetry as documentary — it’s a gentle, rhapsodic film, an emotional change of pace for its director and a moving portrait of a love that still resonates.
- 80New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNew York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMy ideal Leonard Cohen documentary would contain another hour’s worth of concert footage and be screened outdoors on the island of Hydra. Otherwise, this is as full a filmed portrait of the man and his muse as you could ever hope to see.
- 75Washington PostAnn HornadayWashington PostAnn HornadayDutifully covering the rise, fall and final triumph of Cohen’s career, Broomfield relegates Ihlen to the background of her own story, before bringing her back for the film’s touching final act and devastating epilogue. Achieving the kind of balance to which Cohen always aspired, Marianne & Leonard is heartbreaking and heartening in Zen-like equal measure.
- 70VarietyDennis HarveyVarietyDennis HarveyIt’s an entertaining flashback to an always-diverting countercultural epoch, with a touching footnote of a semi-famous love story at its center.
- 70Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranLos Angeles TimesKenneth TuranBecause Ihlen was never the public figure that the often idolized Cohen was, “Words of Love” eventually becomes as much a documentary on him as a record of a relationship. But that relationship does have pride of place, and as described by the participants in vintage audio and by people who knew him in contemporary interviews, it does fascinate.
- 70Rolling StoneDavid FearRolling StoneDavid FearWhat makes this film unmissable, however, is the fact that we get Marianne’s story more or less in full as well. It’s a fleshing out of someone who was more than just a muse, more than just an object of affection for a notorious ladies’ man, a famous singer and an infamous bastard.
- 63RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyRogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyMarianne and Leonard turns out to be a rather run-of-the-mill documentary about Cohen's journey, taking us down well-documented paths.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyThe Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyThe doc swells with wonderful archival footage that immerses you in the hedonistic environment the principals occupied, but in ranging wide it somehow doesn’t go deep, or at least deep enough, into its twin protagonists to satisfy as the full story.
- 60Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonWall Street JournalJohn AndersonWhile the title Marianne & Leonard sounds as if it’s out to give the female half of a famous partnership equal time, it does something quite close to the opposite.
- 58IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid Ehrlich“Words of Love” struggles to thread the needle between a conventional bio doc and a more specific portrait of two souls who found some kind of refuge in each other.