“Well you know I love living with you but you make me forget so much / I forget to pray for the angels and then the angels forget to pray for us.” This is one of the songs written and performed by the Canadian songwriter, author and poet. Leonard Cohen V “So long Marianne“, a hymn to his love for Norway Marian Helen.

A story where love is not as glamorous as it is made out to be today through filtered Instagram images. And today, there is nothing more predictable than the way love is presented in a cinematic romantic comedy.

Cohen’s turbulent romance with Ilene is now being brought to the small screen via the television series “So long Marianne» director Norwegian Austin Carlsen (“Exit”, “Doug”) and Canada Browen Hughes (“Breaking Bad”, “Better Call Saul”). this is about international co-production, which will be filmed in Greece, Canada and Norway. The plot unfolds on the idyllic Hydra, and in winter in Oslo and Montreal.

The script contains a human, intimate, heartbreaking and shocking story of love, youth, searches, finding the meaning of life and the sacrifices that it makes you make. This is the story of two very concrete and normal people.

“Poetry is simply evidence of life. If your life burns well, poetry is but ashes.”

Leonard Cohen

Photography © Dominik Issermann
hydra
Greece
1982 pic.twitter.com/502wkrUlyI

— Joe (@Jopolkadot) July 15, 2020

Marian Helen is a living embodiment of the problem of women’s equality: she grew up at a time when women were taught to be submissive, and she herself never agreed with such a mentality.

She refused to be the “good girl” that society and her family demanded. It is no coincidence that Leonard Cohen and Axel Jensen, two of the greatest writers of the 20th century, came to her, and each of them found his voice when he was next to Marianne.

Of course, Leonard Cohen is a different case. His life is a wake-up call for a growing number of people who feel that normal work infringes on their dignity. Perhaps not even knowing what price one has to pay for a career. Cohen worked hard from the age of 15 to 32. This is the story of a man who had everything: appearance, talent, charm, but for most of his life he felt inadequate. However, the affair with Ilene created one of the most important cultural images of our time: a beautiful poetic tribute to life.

Meeting Leonard and Marianne

Marian Helen first visited Hydra in early 1958, when living conditions were unprecedented and there were few foreign artists. He was on the side of the new Norwegian avant-garde writer Axel Jensen. Their relationship was adventurous, the author decided not to follow the social mores, which was consistent with his interest in other women. This was commonplace in the foreign artist community, and it wasn’t limited to men. After a long break, they got back together, got married, and had a son, Axel Jr. When Jensen met another woman and left with her soon after the baby was born, Ilene felt lost and abandoned, but she didn’t want to go home.

Around the same time, in the spring of 1960, a handsome, suave Canadian poet joined Hydra’s growing creative community. He left dreary and damp London to write his first novel.

As Cohen later recalled: “They were all young, beautiful and full of talent, sprinkled with a kind of golden sand. All of them had special and unique qualities. It is, of course, a feeling of youth, but in the beautiful pearl of the Saronic Gulf, it is captured in the sparkling shots of the era.

Soon, Cohen and Eileen began first friendships, and then romantic relationships. The beginning of their relationship was not affected by the environment. Cohen was dedicated to his work. He got up early, sat on the veranda in the sun, and reverently wrote three pages a day on an old typewriter. At night, he played the guitar and sang to put the little boy Ilin to sleep. Then he did not think about a musical career.

Ilene, who was only 25 years old, was deeply in love. She sent her son back to Norway to live with her grandmother, and then moved in with Cohen, who bought himself a house on Hydra at 26.

But no matter how beautiful and alluring the island was, in order to live on it, work was required. Even finding drinking water required effort. Ilene took care of Cohen, and he, in turn, provided her with everything she needed. Without any conscious decision on his part, Ilene actually became his muse.

A divergent, destructive version of Leonard Cohen’s So Long, Marianne – Oslo, 1993 https://t.co/kxLsQjQx2X pic.twitter.com/Gd3rqbdebo

— DrHGuy (@DrHGuy) April 2, 2023

International project

The Austin Carlsen series, inspired by the love story of Leonard Cohen and Marian Helen, is one of three projects backed by Nordisk Film & TV Fond. According to the information will be shown first on the Norwegian channel NRK and later on other European networks.

Set in 1960s Hydra, it is the story of two equally lonely people who fall in love at a point in their lives when they are still trying to figure out their identity.

After the acclaimed series Exit, Carlsen brings to screen the love story between acclaimed songwriter Cohen and his muse Ilene, who inspired some of his greatest songs such as “So Long, Marianne”, “Like a Bird on the Wire” and “Like a Bird on the Wire”. “This is not the way to say goodbye.”

Leonard Cohen and Friends on Hydra Island pic.twitter.com/T6HX3SClI8

— marysocontrary (@so_contrary) January 8, 2021

The project is a co-production between Connect3 (Canada), Tanweer Productions (Greece), co-financed by SVT, DR, Yle and RÚV, with Canadian and Greek tax incentives, supported by the Norwegian Film Institute and Creative Europe. The cast and other members will be announced soon.