To honor the fifth anniversary of his death, Leonard Cohen’s posthumous song “Puppets” has received a new video. The stirring visual was directed by Daniel Askill and stars Bobbi Salvör Menuez, both of whom worked on the short for Cohen’s track “Happens to the Heart.” Watch the clip for “Puppets,” which was shot on location in New York City, below.
“Puppets” and “Happens to the Heart” both appeared on Cohen’s 2019 posthumous LP Thanks for the Dance. The album was created in close collaboration with Cohen’s son Adam Cohen, as well as a huge cast of musicians including Damien Rice, Leslie Feist, Richard Reed Parry, and the National’s Bryce Dessner, all of whom assisted in finishing the work the singer and songwriter left behind when he died November 7, 2016.
Of the new video for “Puppets,” director Daniel Askill said in press materials:
It has been such a gift to have the opportunity to create these visual responses to the music of Leonard Cohen. Cohen has an incredible ability to create a bridge between the sublime and the prosaic—the metaphysical and political. In “Puppets,” he does that while addressing dark themes with a poetic insight. This video for “Puppets” has been born out of a wonderful ongoing dialogue with Adam Cohen. It is in some ways a darker counter point to the first film we made for “Happens to the Heart.” Shot on location in New York, this film follows the symbolic journey of a single figure through darkness towards a transcendence. In many ways, it is visually pointing to the idea that Leonard often beautifully evokes in different ways—that the darkness and the light of our experience is deeply entangled—and maybe at a fundamental level they are in fact one and the same.
Revisit “Leonard Cohen’s Grand Tour and His Brilliant Final Act” on the Pitch.
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