So Long Marianne TV series filmed on Hydra

[LisaLCFan]

‘Oppenheimer’s’ Alex Wolff on ‘So Long, Marianne,’ a Series About How Leonard Cohen ‘Sacrificed Love on the Altars of Fame’...

It certainly sounds like Wolff did his homework -- should be interesting to see how he portrays Leonard.

[B4real]

Yes, Lisa, seems he's really thrown himself into the role and here's another link along the same lines -

Series Mania: Alex Wolff Shines as Leonard Cohen in ‘So Long, Marianne’

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv ... 235857190/

In the first few minutes of his first Zoom casting call with actor Alex Wolff, Oystein Karlsen knew he had found his Leonard Cohen.

“He came on the screen like this,” the Norwegian director and screenwriter puts his hand over his face, with one eye poking out. “He said: ‘Sorry, I’m so hung over. I know I’m not going to get the role. I feel horrible.’ I thought: That’s Leonard!”

Karlsen already had his eye on Wolff to play the famously melancholic Canadian singer-songwriter in his new TV miniseries about Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, his great love, muse and the woman who inspired the song that gives the series its title: So Long, Marianne.

“I wanted a professional musician and singer because I wanted our Leonard to really sing, to really play Cohen’s music, to not have to fake that,” says Karlsen. “I knew Alex from his music [as part of the sibling pop duo Nat & Alex Wolff]. His mother’s an actress and writer. His father’s a pianist. So he comes from that same Cohen-like artistic background.”

Despite being separated from Cohen by a couple of generations, Wolff was deeply familiar with his work.

“Cohen is an integral part of music in general, so ‘Suzanne,’ ‘Hallelujah,’ ‘Bird on a Wire’ was all known to me, like Bob Dylan was,” Wolff says. “But his poetry was introduced to me when I was maybe 12, 13 when my brother gave me his Selected Works. Which is an amazing book, spanning from Let Us Compare Mythologies [published when Cohen was just 22] to much later works. So I was already a fan but what I going through at the time…well I think both Oystein and I needed Leonard at this time in our lives.”

“I’d just done three seasons of a series called Exit in Norway, which is about capitalism on steroids,” says Karlsen, jumping in. “It’s really, really cynical. I was offered to do season four but I said I just can’t. Because you sort of become what you write, and I felt telling a story about love — So Long, Marianne might not be a perfect love story but it is a love story — I felt telling this story would be a lifesaver.”

So Long Marianne, which had its world premiere at France’s Series Mania television festival, is a co-production between Canadian pay-TV channel Crave and Norway’s public broadcaster NRK. The eight-part series follows Cohen and Ihlen’s relationship in the 1960s, from its start as two 20-something expats escaping the world on the idyllic Greek island of Hydra to its end in New York, when Cohen, now a rising music star, turned away from her.

“I sacrificed my love on the altars of fame,” Cohen would say later.

The series has an impressive list of cameos and co-stars, including Peter Stormare (Fargo) as Canadian poet and Cohen mentor Irving Layton; Paddington 2‘s Noah Taylor and The Last of Us actor Anna Torv as George Johnston and Charmian Clift, the acclaimed Australian writers who set up a community for expat artists on Hydra; and The Crown actor Ben Lloyd-Hughes as Alan Ginsberg, one of the many writers who joined that bohemian community for the sex, the drugs and the inspiration.

But at the core of So Long, Marianne are Cohen and Ihlen. When we first meet them, Ihlen, played by Norwegian actress Thea Sofie Loch Ness (One Night in Oslo) is in a toxic relationship with her husband, Norwegian writer Alex Jensen (Ragnarok actor Jonas Strand Gravli), and struggling to raise their infant son. She begins an affair with the young Canadian poet who had come to Hydra on a whim.

“Cohen had quit university and escaped to London because he couldn’t bear working at his uncle’s factory in Montreal,” says Karlsen, “but it was miserable in London, it rained six months straight. So one day he goes into a bank and there’s this really tan, really happy, smiling guy behind the counter. He asks him: ‘How can you be so happy in rainy London?’ And he tells him: ‘I just came back from Greece, from Hydra.’ So Cohen took out all his money and booked a one-way ticket. There he met Marianne. And they were together 10 years. In that same period, he went from being a struggling poet to becoming a superstar.”

Artistic biopics can be treacherous, especially for figures as well-known and beloved as Leonard Cohen. Many veer between bland mimeography and slavish hagiography. So Long, Marianne manages to avoid these perils by treating its subjects not as great artists in the making, but as ordinary messed-up 20-somethings. It’s set in the ’60s but, were it not for the lack of cellphones and social media, So Long Marianne could be a portrait of Gen Z.

“I think we overly divvy up generations and time periods: the ’60s, the ’70s, whatever,” says Wolff. “This is just about people and they’re struggling. They don’t have any money. They’re on this island and they’re trying to figure out who they are. They’re all in pain and looking for family, looking for sex and drugs and looking for recognition, for some meaning. That’s not a generational thing. I think the reason people love Leonard is because he spoke about loneliness. He spoke about suicide. He spoke about these darker things in a way that was entertaining. Things that everyone is dealing with. That they’ve always been dealing with it and that they always will deal with.”

Wolff spent a year and a half “becoming Leonard,” working on Cohen’s soft, slow voice with its Montreal-flavored lilt, on the “Cohen slouch” — in nearly every scene, Wolff’s body seems off-kilter as if the room is tilting around him — down to minute details like Cohen’s style of playing guitar, his handwriting, even the size shoes he wore.

“I think I did everything I could. At certain points, it got disgusting the amount I threw myself at it because it felt really good to allow him into my emotional orbit,” said Wolff. “But I think it’s boring to talk about, honestly, it only really matters if it works, you know?”

It does work. Wolff’s performance as Cohen goes beyond cover band imitation to feel lived in. He wears his Leonard like a rumpled raincoat. The series truly comes alive in the moments when Wolff sings, as Cohen, on camera.

“That’s all me singing, all me playing,” says Wolff. “I’m not a studied actor, I really don’t know what I’m doing, so I really had to kind of…well like Leonard said, If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day. So eventually, I just said fuck it, I’ll give everything to it. Oystein said to me: ‘Do you want to be Canadian all the time? Do you want to be singing in this? Do you want to smoke real cigarettes? And the answer was yes to all three of those.”

Karlsen received the blessing of the Cohen family for his series — they were consulted at all stages in the development — and So Long, Marianne uses several of Cohen’s songs throughout.

But much of the dialogue in So Long, Marianne was improvised, with Wolff drawing on hours of interviews with Cohen and “every single line” he wrote, whether as a song lyric, a poem, or in one of his novels.

“Reading the words, they start to become your words, and they feel so delicate, so precise and elegant, it feels so good, it tastes good to say them. If there was ad-libbing [in the series] it was never to say a Cohen thing, it was more to just feel your way into it. I don’t want to sound kumbaya about it, but [this part] was so large for me, this whole thing, that it’s hard to talk about,” says Wolff. “Once, when Leonard was asked to talk about his poetry, he said: ‘You might as well just be reading the instructions from a can of shoe polish. It’s about what you do with your voice, your body.’ And I kind of feel that way too [about my performance]. You might as well just be reading from a shoe polish can. You just have to kind of feel the thing and that’s enough.”

[lizzytysh]

This is such a beautiful and interesting interview. I wonder if I'll ever have access to the series.

[B4real]

‘So Long, Marianne’: Watch Alex Wolff Become Leonard Cohen In NRK & Crave Drama Series

Here’s an exclusive first trailer at So Long, Marianne, the Norwegian-Canadian drama series about the life of Leonard Cohen - https://deadline.com/video/so-long-mari ... ard-cohen/

It's also on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjyIogMH2jA

[LisaLCFan]

This doesn't look too bad, and there is finally a release date! Something to look forward to in the fall.

[DennisBerlin]

For the German members of this forum:

The miniseries "So Long, Marianne" will be aired on NDR at October 02; 23:30 (all 4 parts).

I'm still rather highly skeptic about that whole enterprise, but I will give it a try.


All the best,
Dennis

[HugoD]

Txs for this post. That channel is available in my TV subscription so I can and will record it. Only hope that it is not overdubbed with German voice actors as is/was (?) common.

[DennisBerlin]

Only hope that it is not overdubbed with German voice actors as is/was (?) common.

It's still common. And I'm afraid it will be overdubbed. But perhaps it's available in dual-channel sound, which I don't know. But I cross my fingers for you.

Dennis

[LisaLCFan]

For those in Canada, it will be on Crave TV (a subscription streaming channel) on September 27. I don't know if all episodes will be available at once, or over a period of time. I don't currently subscribe to Crave, but I suppose I will do so at some point to watch this series.

[Hartmut]

In the ARD Mediathek it will already be available to stream starting 22 September.

For now, there's just the trailer (with dubbed audio).

https://www.ardmediathek.de/serie/Y3JpZ ... 5kZS81MDI0

[Hartmut]

In the ARD Mediathek you can choose the original audio track (mostly English).

[jarkko]

In Finland YLE TV1 will air the first episode "Hydra" on Sunday October 27.
The series will also be streamed by YLE Areena, maybe all episodes on the same day.
In Finland all programs are aired in the original language (except programs for little children, those are dubbed).

[Hartmut]

In Finland all programs are aired in the original language (except programs for little children, those are dubbed).

Yes, go ahead, rub it in ...

[Nothing left to do]

The German newspaper 'Der Tagesspiegel' published today a review of the eight-part series 'So Long, Marianne' (in German):
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/der- ... 01741.html

A rough translation with Google translator results in the following English version (it is a bit bumpy in some parts):

“So long, Marianne – A Leonard Cohen series”: The world star and the middle-class woman

Over eight times 50 minutes, the moving ARD series tells of the love of the later music legend for the Norwegian Marianne Ihlen during the 1960s on the island of Hydra.

When Leonard Cohen learned that his great love Marianne Ihlen would soon die, he wrote her a moving letter: "Knowing that I am so close to you, you can just reach out your hand and I think you will reach mine." Marianne Ihlen died in July 2016, Leonard Cohen just a few months later, in November of the same year.

By then, the two had long since gone their separate ways. The Canadian Cohen had become a world star, the greatest lyrical force among all the singer-songwriters of his time, while the Norwegian Ihlen had lived a middle-class life, married, worked in a human resources department, and occasionally worked as a painter.

That sounds like a total break-up, the finale of an unequal relationship that began in 1960 on the Greek island of Hydra. And that is the greatest achievement of the series "So long, Marianne" (ARD Mediathek, NDR television from October 2): What is told over eight 50-minute segments is actually the story, the love story of two people in their early 20s who recognize each other, support each other, put up with each other and give each other the strength to become the final version of themselves.

Back then, at the beginning of the 1960s, the Greek island of Hydra was a gathering place for artists of all kinds, whether writers, painters, musicians, a very liberal place with lots of alcohol and other drugs; who slept with whom was no secret. The linchpin of the expat community was the Australian couple Charmian Clift (Anna Torf) and George Johnston (Noah Taylor). They had already lived on the island for a few years, were established writers, but could only make a mediocre living from it.

Leonard Cohen (Alex Wolff) wants to escape a narrow Jewish family life and is supposed to work in his uncle's textile factory, even though he sees himself as a poet and a novelist. Marianne Ihlen (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) has come to the island with the author Axel Jensen (Jonas Strand Gravli). A toxic relationship that Marianne refuses to give up, even when Jensen cheats on her time and time again and she becomes a single mother with their child.

Leonard has an idiosyncratic sense of humor, he struggles with himself, with words and lyrics, he is full of testosterone, and his first songs captivate those around him. What happens next, and this is the epicenter of the series, is the mutual acquittal of Leonard and Marianne. Only when she meets and starts a relationship with Cohen does Ihlen encourage to break up with Jensen and live a love with Cohen in which there are no claims of ownership. "Come on, Marianne" is the appeal for change in the first version of the song.

Then, a few years later, when Cohen released his first albums and lost himself in countless affairs and drug-induced highs in New York, in the legendary Hotel Chelsea, Marianne helped him and brought him back to Hydra. But their time together was short. "I have tried in my way to be free," says the final line of the Cohen song "Bird On The Wire," which was also inspired by Cohen's relationship with Ihlen. Fame also means giving up love.

The series is a Greek-Canadian-German-Norwegian co-production. There is a slight bias in it. The book was written by Norwegians Øystein Karlsen ("Exit") and Jo Nesbø (the thriller author who also writes lyrics for the Norwegian pop band Di Derre) and Canadian Tony Wood, and directed by Karlsen and Canadian Bronwen Hughes. This interaction guarantees the legitimacy of the series title "A Leonard Cohen Series", and it also creates the exciting balance that Marianne Ihlen is not shown as a mere muse, as a woman at Cohen's side, but as an equal partner, as a caregiver and as an independent woman, as a never-forgotten influencer in Cohen's life.

The coming-of-age series takes its time; not much happens in the first few episodes, but the characters tell each other all the more, report from each other, about each other, against each other. Did these dialogues ever take place? It doesn't matter, for the authors they are an eminent expression of the characters. "So long, Marianne" doesn't want to be a slavish hagiography of the Cohen-Ihlen relationship, or even a biopic, but rather an intense, condensed portrayal of a love, its dangers, its happiness, its moments of liberation. Amor vincit omnia? Yes! No! Yes, no, no, yes.

Alex Wolff plays Leonard Cohen, Thea Sofie Loch Næss plays Marianne Ihlen. And the way they play Cohen and Ihlen, they don't show cultural icons, but two special people on the path to finding themselves. The audience witnesses impressive acting and accompanies this discovery and self-discovery. The closeness to the actors is there immediately, but it is not intrusive.

Anyone who has seen the series will hear the song "So long, Marianne" differently. Because they know what went into it and what flows out of it. Both Marianne Ihlen and Leonard Cohen would have turned 90 this year.

PS: If the series is not enough for you, we recommend the five-part NDR podcast “So long, Cohen”.

Obviously the reviewer liked the series, so I will give it a try.

The eight part series can be accessed here:
https://www.ardmediathek.de/serie/so-lo ... ZS81MDI0/1
Although it says the original version is available too, it only plays the German version (or I am overlooking something). Maybe someone can check it.

The podcast (in German) mentioned in the last paragraph can be accessed here:
https://www.ardaudiothek.de/episode/so- ... /13736267/

[Hartmut]

Although it says the original version is available too, it only plays the German version (or I am overlooking something). Maybe someone can check it.

Is the language selection icon (see screenshot) not working for you?