There can’t be many songwriters who don’t slump in defeated wonderment before the lyrical grace of Leonard Cohen. In this unvarnished concert documentary, shot by the Australian filmmaker Lian Lunson at the Sydney Opera House in January 2005, U2 guitarist the Edge attributes to Cohen "an almost biblical authority." Singer Bono says, "He’s our Shelley, our Byron." Possibly they overstate the case; possibly the opposite.

The concert was a Cohen tribute, organized by that invaluable record producer and cultural archivist Hal Willner. It brought together a disparate group of musicians — including Rufus Wainwright, Beth Orton, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Teddy Thompson and Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons), along with U2 — to perform 13 of this great artist’s many great songs. Apart from some offstage interview material, and a number of mesmerizing conversational interludes with Cohen himself, that’s pretty much it. The stage set is minimal, the lighting is basic, and since we don’t see much of the band (which includes fiddles, accordion, a glockenspiel and even a musical saw), our attention is entirely focused on the performers, a few of whom are extraordinary. And through them, of course, we are able to contemplate the magical, compressed eloquence of Leonard Cohen’s words.

Rufus Wainwright, for example, a playfully sardonic performer and a true star, brings just the right rueful tone to "Everybody Knows":

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost

And if we must hear someone besides Cohen himself sing "Hallelujah," that breathtaking celebration of the sacred within the profane, then it might as well be Wainwright:

But remember when I moved in you
And the Holy Ghost was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Nick Cave offers a jaunty, if not particularly illuminating, reading of "I’m Your Man," and a shambling rendition of "Suzanne" — that anthem of every bookworm who’s ever wanted to score with a hot chick. ("You’ve touched her perfect body with your mind.") Beth Orton contributes a serviceable take on the beautiful "Sisters of Mercy," and then joins Jarvis Cocker for a run-through of the marvelous "Death of a Ladies’ Man." ("I’ll never see a face like yours in years of men to come / I’ll never see such arms again in wrestling or in love.")

The high point of the show, however, at least until U2 comes on, is provided by Antony Hegarty. Wearing some sort of ripped fishnet smock over a white shirt, with his now-darkened hair swaying around his shoulders and his body fidgeting to some mysterious inner rhythm, this extraordinary singer all but disappears into "If It Be Your Will," rising back up again only at the end, when the song builds to a resounding gospel-style climax. Another true star.

Then U2 comes on, and we are forced to contemplate once again the possibility that there may not be anything of a musical nature that these guys can’t do pretty darn well. Here, they back Leonard Cohen himself, which would seem to be an impossibility — the world-conquering arena-rock band and the 70-year-old Zen-monk recluse? The tune is another of Cohen’s little classics, called "Tower of Song," and he sings it — or intones it, rather — while standing in sublime stillness in front of the band. Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr., lay back on bass and drums, Bono mans a minimalist synthesizer, and the Edge ornaments Cohen’s murmurous phrases with whispery slide-guitar lines. It’s a consciously small and eerily gorgeous performance, especially when Bono weighs in with a low-key backing vocal toward the end. Worth the price of admission, as they say.

Leonard Cohen’s work, from the beginning of his creative life ("when I prayed to have some response to the things I thought were beautiful," as he recalls), has been a documentation of his passage through this world on his way to the next one, such as that may be. Given his advanced age, there’s an unavoidably elegiac tone to this film. But Cohen leaves one last candle lit as his performance with U2 comes to a close:

Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back
They’re moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you’ll be hearing from me, baby, long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly
From a window in the Tower of Song

—Kurt Loder

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