This song has some great lyrics (you can read them amid the chords below). I think the best songs are like short stories, where they allude to enough extra detail that you can fill in a lot of backstory however you see fit. In the same way, I think that’s how the best songs manage to mean so much to so many different people… they are so wide open to interpretation that the listeners do all the work to mold it into something they can feel deeply. The song itself just nudges them in the direction they already want to go.
Here’s a clip from some movie, set to the music from Leonard Cohen. This is actually the first time I’ve heard the original version of the song… I have a live performance by Regina Spektor which has a different flow to it. I like the Spektor version better, frankly.