The 1990s was what got me "into" vampires personally, and an era which I was sad to see "die" with the rise of Hot Topic and the neon and pleather clad vampires in the late-1990s and early-2000s, followed by the rise of Twilight and what seemed like the end of anyone taking vampire films seriously. Ever since, vampire films have often borrowed from other genres (science fiction, comedies, or zombie movies) to stay relevant. As of recently, the age of just good, seriously approached vampire stories seemed like it was in the past.
And then I watched Byzantium, which was haunting and lovely and ultimately much more emotionally compelling than Jordan's earlier Interview. And I could have dismissed that as a single film and not (perhaps) a shift in the vampire genre if I also didn't get the chance to watch Jim Jarmush's Only Lovers Left Alive this past weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, are we in for a vampire art renaissance?
Jim Jarmush may seem like an odd director for a vampire film. The art-film auteur, known for slow paces and long takes, is not always the most accessible director. However, he does like to play with genre, as his film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai shows.
However, going into the film, I was skeptical about how "vampirish" the movie would actually be. Some post-Sundance reviews that I read made comments such as, "It's not really a vampire film" or just referred to the main characters as "Immortals" rather than vampires. I was expecting perhaps a film like The Hunger, which hints at the vampire genre and follows some tropes but ultimately tries to distance itself through other mythologies. In Only Lovers Left Alive, though, this is not the case; Jim Jarmush has, without a doubt, made a vampire movie. The characters drink blood, have fangs, move faster than humans possibly can, and are near (but not completely) immortal. They joke about garlic, have issues crossing a threshold without an invitation (though that seems more about bad luck than magic), and can't go out during the day.
This. Is. A. Vampire. Movie.
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| See: vampire |
I think what confuses people, and the reason some have suggested it's "not really a vampire movie," is one important detail: it's good. This is an extraordinarily good movie. And I'm not saying that it's good simply for a vampire movie. No, this film is notable in any genre; it is a work of tonal and visual art.
The film follows two vampires: one named Adam and one named Eve. It is unclear if we are supposed to assume that these two are the original "Adam and Eve" from The Book of Genesis, but the names are certainly symbolic. Adam and Eve are married, and seemingly have been since the European Middle Ages, but live separately from each other, Eve in Tangier and Adam in Detroit. Adam is especially a typical Jarmush character, full of loneliness and melancholy, contemplating suicide as he works alone on experimental music in a house that is nearly falling apart. While also withdrawn, Eve is more active and social than Adam, slipping through the streets of Tangier like a ghost.
We learn that Eve is good friends with Christopher "Kit" Marlowe, the playwright from England's Early Modern period and rival to Shakespeare. Except, as the movie claims, the undead Marlowe is actually the author of Shakespeare's plays and the "illiterate" Shakespeare simply took credit. It's an odd detail and one which made me bristle slightly as a fan of Shakespeare, but it fits a theme of the film. All the old vampires are secretive artists floating in and out of history. Adam has a similar story of writing the Adagio that Franz Schubert "took credit" for. The whole movie follows this theme of hidden art and repeating history.
When Eve learns of Adam's depression (to which Kit remarks that "I wish I had met him before I wrote Hamlet"), she flies to the United States to be with her husband and reunite again as lovers. The rest of the plot is almost unimportant; Adam shows Eve around Detroit, they talk about history, Eve's sister Ava shows up briefly and wreaks havok (not unlike the plot of Kiss of the Damned), Adam goes to Tangier with Eve, and they start a new chapter in their lives.
But this movie is not about plot. It's about ideas and tone. It's about no less than the rise and fall of human culture.
As Adam shows Eve Detroit, they both refer to it as a "wasteland," full of empty houses and decay. Adam is especially pessimistic about it, at one point taking Eve to the spot where Henry Ford made his first Model-T prototype, which was then turned into an elaborate theater. "And now?" Adam practically spits, "A car park."
Adam is disgusted by most humans, calling them "zombies," those who shuffle along like sheep and do not really live. He raves to Eve about how humans have destroyed the environment and "even contaminated their own blood" and have destroyed more great ideas than they've created. He uses humanity's rejection of Galileo, Pythagoras, and Tesla as examples, and (given how personally slighted he seems) we're supposed to glean that Adam knew many of these great thinkers personally.
Eve, however, reminds Adam that history is cyclical and not just repeating. She insists that Detroit will be a great city again. After all, "there's water here." To cheer Adam up, she asks him to explain one of Einstein's theories to her. He insists that it's a proof, not a theory, and that it is the idea that particles separated are still linked, and that altering or affecting one will by proxy alter and affect the other, even if it is across the universe.
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| SYMBOLISM!!! |
That appears to by the main themes of the film: connections and cycles. For every action, there is a second action. For every rise, there is a fall. For every end, there is a beginning. As much as Adam and Eve see the faults in man, at one point Adam drives Eve to a house and says that it is where Jack White (of The White Stripes) grew up. She claps and says "Oh, I love Jack White!" It's a kind of paradox: the disgust for man's harms to itself, and the celebration of the art that often comes out of such pain.
In an article from Film Comment, Jarmush once described his method of writing a film: "Rather than finding a story that I want to tell and then adding the details, I collect the details and then try to construct a puzzle of story. I have a theme and a kind of mood and the characters but not a plotline that runs straight through." This definitely shows in Only Lovers Left Alive. Like many great art films (see others by Jarmush, the films of Richard Linklater, etc.) the conversations and themes are more important than the plot. And Jarmush also does a great job of matching his film's tone to these themes.
One incredible detail about the movie, and one which that helps with this tone, is that the movie exists almost entirely in a five color scheme: red, blue, white, black, and yellow. Every scene of the film is lit and framed by these colors. We rarely see anything else. Adam and Eve are also opposing colors (black and white) for most of the film, allowing us to see them as the "split particle" that Adam mentions. They create a sort of yin-yang, and Jarmush takes advantage of that look in shot after shot.
The simplicity of the look is haunting. Throughout the movie, there are also very few moving shots. Most of the movie is made up of still-camera medium shots, making each scene appear almost like a portrait rather than a typical "motion picture." When the camera does move, it does so symbolically and deliberately; for example, the beginning of the film is a series of dual spinning shots, dissolving over the image of a playing record.
Which brings us to the use of music in the film. Adam is a musician, and his haunting experimental music seems to score most of the film.
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| His angsty, angsty experimental music |
Jarmush is no stranger to experimental sounding music. When he enlisted Neil Young to score Dead Man, Young played all the (sometimes intentionally out-of-tune) instraments himself while holed up in a San Francisco warehouse. Roger Ebert gave a scathing review to the score of the film in particular, saying that "for the film’s final 30 minutes sounds like nothing so much as a man repeatedly dropping his guitar." Only Lovers Left Alive's soundtrack is much more pleasant than Dead Man's, but the connection is there. With the movie set in Detroit and Adam's deep love for the best of music, the whole film seems like a hidden love letter to the history of music, especially the experimental.
I'm not even sure it even needs to be mentioned that lead actors Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are both fantastic in this movie. Swinton blossoms in "unearthly" roles regardless of movie quality. (For example, in the mediocre supernatural-superhero movie Constantine, she was phenomenal as the genderless angel Gabriel.) With Jarmush's directing, Swinton's already powerful acting shines. Hiddleston, as Marlowe suggests, plays Adam as Hamlet, and as an accomplished Shakespearian actor (on top of being known as the suave villain Loki from The Avengers), Hiddleston can pack a huge amount of emotion into the smallest of moments. While Jarmush's directing is visually near flawless, the movie would not have worked without such gorgeous and talented actors, that's for sure.
Every fiber of my movie-loving self recommends this film. As a lover of beautiful movies, this is one of the most gorgeous I've seen in a while. As a lover of thoughtful movies, I found the themes and philosophical conversations definitely engaging. And as, of course, a lover of vampire movies, this one walks the line so interestingly between classic vampire mythology and a new world that it can't help but be fascinating, even in it's slowest moments of thoughtful meditation.
Also, there are blood popsicles.
Rating: 5 out of 5 bites
... and a hope for more films trying to be like this.
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