(Sony, 120 minutes)

www.sonymusic.com

BY JIM ALLEN

Before his 2008 European tour, the last time Leonard Cohen brought his songs to the stage he was 60 years old -- as he puts it here, "just a kid with a crazy dream." The spry, sagacious septuagenarian appears more vital, intense, and energetic than ever on this audiovisual document of his July '08 concert at London's O2 Arena. Needless to say he's the very soul of sartorial splendor, nattily attired in a sharp, dark suit and fedora, and his stage presence is full of suave, subtle gestures. He and his band somehow manage to make the huge venue seem like a small club setting, despite the scenario being, as Cohen puts it with characteristic wryness, "just the other side of intimacy."

Drawing on some 40 years of material, Cohen carries his audience along on a journey from the romantic, Dylanesque ballads of his debut ("So Long Marianne," "Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye") through the Baudelaire-with-a-nylon-string-guitar meeting of folk-rock and art song of his ‘70s work ("Who By Fire"), all the way to his latter-day status as arch, black-humored elder statesman of singer/songwriterdom ("Everybody Knows," "First We Take Manhattan"). Cohen's crater-deep voice is a distinctive instrument in itself, and he uses it as a precise tool to wring maximum poetic resonance from his masterfully crafted lyrics, with the band providing just the right amount of color, but never overpowering their fearless leader.

For all his sardonic sensibilities, Cohen nevertheless seems truly humbled to be performing for such a huge, enraptured audience after such a long absence from public performance; he removes his hat and earnestly, graciously thanks his listeners several times throughout the show. And between songs, the notoriously dark, moody troubadour breaks out into an ear-to-ear grin more often than not. The stage setup is a classy, simple one, and the camera focuses, naturally, on Cohen most of the time, with a predilection for close-ups that reveal an older, but not aged-looking man, having the time of his life. This is balanced out by just enough screen-time for the band to keep things visually interesting, though one might wish for a few more long shots or the reactions of a few faces in the audience now and again. Nevertheless, when one of the world's greatest songwriters returns to roam the stage again after such a woefully long absence -- and does it with so much panache -- all you really need to do is point and shoot for a one-of-a-kind experience.

Special Features: none.