Dance me to the end of the Leonard Cohen video
I’ve finally located a certain video, discovered while I was at YouTube engaged in one of my favorite activities: procrastination by chain-viewing.
You know what chain-viewing is. You watch a video, and then plan to click on just one more on the list of related videos to the right, but find yourself clicking on another and another and another. Later, when you finally come to, you discover that several hours have sped by with nothing to show for them but a bunch of tenacious earworms.
I thought I’d share at least one of those earworms with you, dear readers, because what I finally found was the Leonard Cohen video of “Dance Me to the End of Love,” the one that had gone sadly missing around about the time I first discussed it four years ago in this post about my love affair (of the virtual variety) with the singer-songwriter:
[The video] featured Cohen standing in front of a screen showing couples’ wedding pictures from long ago, and then those very same couples, elderly and nearly unrecognizable as themselves but still dancing together slowly as he sang the haunting, beautiful tune.
When you watch it, please do your best to ignore the young yuppie-ish couple who begin the piece and appear intermittently in it, trying to look natural and failing utterly. They’re obviously actors or even (perish the thought!) models, much better suited to the world of advertisements for kitchen appliances and real estate than the lugubrious yearnings of Cohen. The older couples in the video, on the other hand, are quite clearly the real deal, and almost indescribably touching.
And please please please do try to ignore the flying/floating/burning violin (literal images=not a good idea).
As for the “double your pleasure double your fun” brunette singing twins—well, I’m not sure about them, but I’m certain that some viewers (especially of the male persuasion) may like them very much indeed.
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn…
Nice. Now that’s romance.
The flaky violin was definitely a bad idea, Cohen needs a better producer. The dancing actors/models were a bit of a detraction but tolerable. I liked the connection of young/old lovers. The back-up singers (maybe sisters?) a bit of unnecessary but agreeable eye candy.
Never really listened to Cohen before but he’s an interesting artist. Thanks neo for introducing him to those of us who had previously overlooked him.
Very nice with a touch of old world flavor. The older couples remind me of a friend who said he was having a hard time coordinating his parents 50th Anniversary party because they weren’t speaking to each other. Lol
Right. Too many distractions. Better to have just the black and white pictures juxtaposed against the in living color reality of old age, but an old age made beautiful by love.
What a great theme.
I could get the younger couple as sort of a remembrance of lost youth although it just doesn’t work because that’s not the theme. The inclusion of any sexuality is discordant and the floating violin is just awful. Woof.
The bas relief works and suggests a metaphor: like a stone sculpture is a message for following generation so are relationships where the love at the end is better than the love at the beginning. It is the theme that love works, love survives, love triumphs over death.
“Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof: and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.”–Ecclesiastes 7:8
Another theme which works is the different races but the sameness of love.
One minor theme which they could have done more with is Cohen himself. His song is his love and to some level, the microphone which he holds with a sort of reverence and tenderness. Cohen has a great face and they could have presented more of his emotion and facial gestures. Leave out all the band and the other singers.
My favorite: At about 3 minutes and 10 seconds into the video is the photo image of the young couple behind the now old couple. The girl has a very striking and penetrating gaze. There’s a challenge in that look. The look has not disappeared from the now old woman. There is no resignation in that face. Challenge met and mastered by love. Life is purposeful.
Also at 3 minute and 45 seconds into the video where the lone women approaches the larger-than-life picture. There the empty chair works okay but I think is unnecessary. The single image of the lone woman approaching the larger-than-life picture of her lost mate doesn’t need any symbol. The message is clear: Love is greater than all.
Strange as it may seem we both seem to be on a Leonard Cohen kick.
Very nice indeed.
Cohen is one of those rare songwriters/ performers who is a poet, whose work stands up even without the music, like that of Bob Dylan (whose 70th birthday was yesterday — yikes!).
And I rather liked the Doublemint twins…but that’s the kind of guy I am, definitely of the male persuasion.
Jamie Irons
I didn’t mind the inclusion of the perfect young models. The other people in the video show what they will look like in the future. I suspect it was deliberate.
No slight intended towards Leonard Cohen, but I expected more notice of Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday yesterday. I didn’t see anything in the blogosphere.
I visited bobdylan.com last night, but I didn’t see any way to leave a birthday greeting.
Neo, you know I’m ALWAYS on a Cohen kick! For which I hold you completely to blame. Strange though, this video seems a little different to the one I remember. More polished, somehow? Is it my imagination? I don’t remember so much of the younger couple. Or maybe I blocked it out! 😎
LC is one of my favorites. I remember hearing Suzanne many moons ago and I’ve been a listening to him ever since. I liked the video and I agree with rickl, the very lovely young women standing behind Cohen as the old couples danced was intentional.
Love as we age is a fascinating journey. I look at my partner in life and she is still as beautiful in my eyes as she was way back when she stopped me in my tracks as she set down next to me in physics 101. I was tongue tied and my heart galloped, it was love and lust at first sight. It took me nearly an entire semester to dare to ask her for a date. Lucky me, she said yes. We will dance until the end come what may.
If you didn’t like the two identical twin singers, you would really hate the older video of this song w/naked bimbos jumping up and down on a bed. No joke. Pathetic (except for the touching black and white scenes w/Cohen dancing w/a lovely woman, albeit someone quite a bit younger than himself). Thanks for posting this. Lovely song. And much improved video version.
Ooops. Must correct myself. The jumping bimbos was from a different Cohen song/video that has some melacholy lines about wanting to have one last look at young women.
Favorite Leonard Cohen video: the tribute concert “I’m Your Man.”
Fantastic covers of so many gems in his songbook, with a bio and voiceover by the man himself.
My favorite: Antony singing “If It Be Your Will” (viewable on Youtube).
Neoneocon writes:
“As for the “double your pleasure double your fun” brunette singing twins–well, I’m not sure about them, but I’m certain that some viewers (especially of the male persuasion) may like them very much indeed. ”
Uh, not that anyone would be unwilling to watch the whole thing, but if one were, say, and just for the sake of argument, to simply allow the video to load up, and then return to it later, you wouldn’t happen to know the time-stamp point at which that particular segment appears, would you?
“Indescribably touching…”
Yes indeed. Your write-up interested me, so I watched the video with the sound turned down because I was at work. All of the staged pieces (young dancers, the band, the singer) were dull to me. The first time I saw one of the elderly couples approach and embrace in front of their wedding photo, my breath caught in my chest and I got a lump in my throat. And it happened with every “then and now” scene. The ones where the lone woman gazed at the empty chair and the lone man gazed at the photo were almost unbearably poignant.
Astounding art trapped in an otherwise banal video.
Synchronicity
My wife and I are just starting to plan what we want to do for our 30th wedding anniversary coming up in a few months, and then you post this…
I’ve always been a Leonard Cohen fan, but his videos have always been a little over the top. This one is pretty good though except for the parts you mentioned.
Thanks for posting this.
DNW: you wouldn’t have long to wait. They appear for the first time at 00:49, with a closeup a few moments after, and then intermittently for the rest of the video. They are his female backup singers.
Cohen knows that his deep voice is very nicely set off by female voices of a certain type. He almost always has two female backup singers. Their identities have varied over the years (usually NOT twins). Some of them are quite well-known in their own rights, such as Jennifer Warnes.
Neoneo ..
Thanks, I’ll try and work up the nerve to watch it a little later. I’m kind of squeamish about some things and these Grandfather Waltz type presentations, or so I suspect it to be, are one of them.
I’ll look up Leonard Cohen on Wikipedia first to see who he is. If that is him with his hand outstretched, it looks like he’s been around for a while.
I don’t know why I never heard of him …
DNW: You might start here and here.
neo-neocon Says:
May 26th, 2011 at 9:54 pm
DNW: You might start here and here.”
Thanks.
Followed your link and also went to Youtube.
Cohen: as in the author of that “Suzanne” song sung by Judy Collins, or by a fellow who I always, for some reason, assumed was Chris Christopherson.
Just knowing it wasn’t Christopherson makes it instantly more listenable.
One of the older comments indicated he was a practitioner of Zen. Or at least lived in a Zen monastery. That’s interesting.
A couple of years ago Mark Steyn wrote an interesting article centered on this song, and included an interesting quote from Cohen on where the idea originally came from:
“It’s curious how songs begin because the origin of the song, every song, has a kind of grain or seed that somebody hands you or the world hands you and that’s why the process is so mysterious about writing a song. But that came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt.”
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I LOVE this video. It is my favourite – and I have just been scrolling through all of them in youtube looking for it. turns out it has been unavailable in my country (Norway).. Is there anyway you could download it and send it to me by email as a different file?
I would be most grateful 🙂
Hi there
My dad has tried to find out for over 2 years who the young lady in the original video is. Is there any way at all of finding this out?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks 🙂