Only Lovers Left Alive

I originally wrote this for my blog, Indepedent Ethos. But I love this movie so much, I want to share my POV here: Only Lovers Left Alive, the long-awaited vampire drama by Jim Jarmusch, has to be one of the better date movies I've seen in a long time. There is something beautiful yet romantically slippery about the exquisitely matured bond between the vampire couple at the heart of the film. Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton) may be the first vampires of time immemorial. With so many centuries behind them, Jarmusch, who also wrote the script, presents this couple as the antithesis to the naive lovers in the Twilight Saga.Stunningly stylish from beginning to end, Jarmusch treats the idea of long-surviving/suffering vampires in only the way he can, with brilliant wit and heartfelt respect. Beyond jokes like the characters' names, Jarmusch profoundly considers the effects of immortality on the minds of these creatures, both positively and negatively. Eve can speed read Infinite Jest, and thoughtful Adam tends to agree with Einstein’s critique of quantum mechanics: "Spooky Action At a Distance." She lives more in the moment, taking up residence in an opium den in Tangiers and in the company of Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt) who apparently faked his death in 1593 to carry on living as a vampire (he's still bitter about Shakespeare). Meanwhile, Adam languishes in a big old house in the appropriately ghostly city of Detroit. He surrounds himself with dated electronics and uses rare instruments to compose experimental music on reel-to-reel tape to be released on limited edition 180 gram vinyl with no label. To stay in touch with Adam, Eve uses Facetime on her iPhone while Adam uses a low-resolution webcam attached to a PC tower.As with any romance movies involving mature individuals, love can get complicated, even with this decidedly progressive couple. Over the ages, Adam and Eve have developed a becalmed relationship. They don't raise their voices at each other and despite the huge geographic gulf and differing lifestyles, their affection for one another does not waver. Still, a sort of tired undercurrent runs below the surface of their relationship despite a magnetism of shared experiences and an emotional investment that goes back centuries. They don't just have chemistry, they have a fusion as deep as old bones calcifying to become one. They are old souls incarnate.Ultimately, Adam's loneliness becomes palatable to Eve from across the globe, and she books a red-eye to fly to Detroit. He's gone a tad mad and depressed, turning into a hoarder of sorts. Once at the cluttered mansion, Eve stumbles across a wooden bullet Adam had obtained from his human connection to the black market, Ian (Anton Yelchin). It upsets Eve with a quiet frustration, yet she handles it delicately, recognizing it as a call for attention more than a threat. The real kink comes in the unexpected arrival of Eve's younger sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska), who must have turned undead before her frontal lobe had fully developed. She's the most troublesome of the quartet. While the other vamps prefer anonymity, Ava's rather reckless. Wasikowska plays her with a wide-eyed precocious smile. She's like a mischievous elf hiding in the shadows ready to pounce for a prank, albeit a deadly kind. Her character adds a colorful bit of comic relief to the mostly purposely dour proceedings."only lovers left alive"Still, all of the film's characters are a delight, even if the film's plot is spare and ambling. As it is with most Jarmusch films, it's all about the dynamics between the characters, and he keeps the narrative focused on the nighttime activities of the vamps. The entire movie appropriately unfolds in the shadows, against a perpetual nocturnal backdrop. Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, working with Jarmusch for the first time, delivers varying scenes using diverse degrees of focus and colored filters for different shades of atmosphere.It's all about the vampires in Only Lovers Left Alive, and they are ironically soulful characters. Humanity has somehow lost touch with slowing down and savoring life, unlike these undead culture vultures. Jarmusch places humans in the periphery. Some human characters are only shadows in the distance. "only lovers left alive"They roam the world on a diet of junk food and junk culture to the point that their blood has grown literally unpalatable to the vampires. Adam and Eve don't dare bite anyone's neck for fear of contamination by impure blood. Instead, they look for pure Type O-negative on the black market to sip out of sherry glasses. The vampires don't even refer to mortals as human. Instead, they call them "zombies."The film's score and musical sequences deserve highlighting, beginning with the sumptuously absorbing score by lute player Jozef van Wissem backed by Jarmusch's very own band SQÜRL. The opening scene introducing us to the vampires is a brilliant montage featuring a perpetually rotating camera, turning the image around the screen at what seems to be 33 rpm--- the speed of a record player. The detailed art design, augmented with beguiling costumes, all twirling 'round can feel dizzying. The sensation is heightened further with the growling vocals of Cults' Madeline Follin covering Wanda Jackson's "Funnel Of Love" and the super-delayed echoing of a blues-infused electric guitar weaving around a stomping, slow beat, which is occasionally accented with a single ringing chime. It's a bit of sensory overload, but it captivates all the same. The sequence could work brilliantly as a music video alone.It's not the only time music takes over for narrative of Only Lovers Left Alive in enchanting ways. When the vampires satisfy their thirsts, they act as if they are slipping away into an opiate high. The shallow focus of the scene allows their faces to drift away into blurs, fangs exposed, maws bloody and half-agape. The scene is scored with Wissem lazily dragging a melody across his multi-stringed instrument, varying each refrain with a high note and a low note. Below, a guitar squeals a low, wash of feedback. It's an enthralling moment, which delightfully recurs once more during the course of the film.But the film is filled with many more delightful scenes, as it strides along at a relaxed pace that never tries the audience's patience, despite its two-hour-plus duration. Clearly, Jarmusch has spent a lot of time thinking about his version of the vampire. Even when they are troubled, like Adam, or deviant, like Ava, they remain interesting and even endearing. With Only Lovers Left Alive, Jarmusch has created a rich world that also provides a witty jab to the immature, pop-culture obsessed consumer who does not seem to know how to stop and savor the more complex arts. Yet, Jarmusch is not above offering a bit of self-deprecating critique back at his over-seriousness as channeled by these vampires. Despite its quirks, Only Lovers stands as one of his greatest and still entertaining personal statements in a long time.--Hans Morgenstern

Gave this One as Valentines as was a fun date movie! Halloween is appropriate too!

I wanted to like this film, but I just really did not. Maybe I am biased because I prefer zombies to vampires, and I got an unpleasant visceral response watching the vampires drink blood, then space out like drug users after a fix.My annoyances with this film are many. The pacing of this film is just...so...SLOW. Multiple, multiple shots of the vampire lovers holding each other and staring off into space - what a waste. And these vampires, while articulate and worldly, seem like the kind of dull weirdos with whom I most definitely would not like to spend an afternoon chatting. Tilda Swinton's Eve is the more palatable of the two, other than her annoying habit of calling every single tree, plant and animal by its anthropological name, instead of just calling a skunk a skunk, but Tom Hiddleston's Adam seems like an outright miserable, condescending, "Debbie downer" pompous bore.Things looked like they might become more interesting when Eve's troublesome younger sister Ava shows up uninvited on the scene, and I was hoping she might go full Betelgeuse and cause some good chaos, but her visit is short-lived and not exceptional, though Mia Wasikowska is fantastic in this role and for me the only really interesting character. Anton Yelchin adds to the cast as Ian, Adam's procurer of the odd and unusual, and he plays his role fabulously. Ian is far more appealing than the two vampires since he is in the music biz and I want to know who he knows and what he does when not on odd errands for Adam. John Hurt rounds out the cast playing Stephen Marlowe, and he offers up some fine acting, but I did not gravitate to Marlowe particularly.I dunno, many will disagree with me on this, but I felt like everything but the kitchen sink was thrown into this film and it reeked of smirking condescension, as if people who aren't art snobs and highbrows are just losers, or in this case, zombies, as the vampires call the living. Like your high school teacher who tried to seem cool by rambling on about some random scientific journal nobody else reads to make up for low wages and a high mortgage payment or the office narcissist who needs to tell everyone around him what he just bought and the trendy restaurants where he has dined. Parts of this film felt like I was watching a documentary, not a movie. I watch films for entertainment, not to be preached at or hear a bunch of facts and data, or to take a tour of abandoned downtown Detroit. There is a yearning for a long bygone era threading throughout this film, but too much is too much. Great filmmaking to me is when the lessons are subtle or the viewer can come up with his or her own interpretation, while this film to me feels like being repeatedly punched in the gut or banged on the head with a baseball bat.I guess the only highlights of this film were the sets, costumes and cinematography. Visually, Only Lovers Left Alive is a beautiful feast for the eyes. The acting iss first-rate, no question, but the main characters bored me, the pace of the film bored me, the lack of a real plot bored me. I can summarize this film by saying: "Two vampires mostly staring at walls in dark, candlelit rooms."As to love, I didn't get any major love story from this. Adam and Eve are two very different individuals, she an extrovert who enjoys being in the middle of things, he a moody and depressive introvert who rarely leaves his home. Their relationship is unique in that they are two mature people who don't need one another but instead choose one another, who are connected by an invisible thread and have a strong and unwavering bond that spans across miles and continents. But overall, still two vampires staring at walls whilst sipping blood and listening to rock 'n' roll thinking they are morally superior to everyone else.Not my cup of tea, this film.

Only Lovers Left Alive is a vampire movie but vampirism is barely mentioned. There is blood but very little biting. The first biting that does take place is crass and vulgar and massively inconvenient for the two central characters. These vampires are presented like washed up bohemians, dusty and slightly shop-soiled they live quietly in the shadows surrounded by the echoes of faded glories and full of memory. The mood is melancholic but there is love too - a quiet and tender love that knows everything there is to know about the other and accepts it all, the sort of love that sustains across the centuries. And there is the love of ancient friendship. Performances by all the actors are subtle and beautifully underplayed, gradually revealing the depths of the characters.There is just as much for the eye. The composition of each shot, the colour palettes, the dim electric light in curtained rooms and the glaring white of wet roads, the things that are in the rooms, all have as much depth and as much to say as the performances. It is simply beautiful.Watch this film.

Notwithstanding some glowing reviews, I cannot concur with all the enthusiasm that this film has generated. I have seen most of Jim Jarmush's films and as far as I am concerned they are a very mixed bag. It's not that this offering is as eccentric as some of his others,: it's just that it failed to engage me at all. As far as the lovers are concerned, I couldn't imagine anything less romantic or convincing as far as this pair of "enraptured" vampires is concerned. The film moves at a glacial pace with very little plot development or content. OK, the photography is fine, but then again it all takes place in very low light which for me also detracts from the picture's appeal. Sorry, Jim, but I suppose it's all down to individual tastes!

Jim Jarmusch is hardly prolific, when it comes tom output, and when he makes a film it is always going to be interesting. Here he delves into the lives (or deaths) of three vampires - though the use of that word is strangely absent in this film. Tilda Swinton plays Eve - she lives in the laid back idyll of Tangier. She is a modern vamp and she relies on Christopher Marlowe (yes The Marlowe) -John Hurt - to get her `the good stuff' from an apothecary.Meanwhile her husband Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is living the life of a rock and roll recluse in the decaying wasteland of Detroit. He has a gofor to do his bidding but also has his `supplier' while he makes music on ancient guitars. Now Eve decides to visit and their reunion is given a rude awakening when her estranged sister turns up.Now the plot is pretty simple in that you could have told the whole lot in a short film and this lasts just under two hours. However, as with all great journeys it is the actual travelling that will often be the best part - with the destination often a foregone conclusion. This is `lyrical' and I read one review that said it moved at a `glacial pace'. Well to some it will seem like that but the performances from all concerned have to be relished to be appreciated. This will not be to everyone's taste but it certainly managed to keep me pleasantly occupied for the duration - but not too pleasant - which I think is the whole point.

A masterpiece that raises the ‘vampire’ character to the splendor of the great gothic novels written in the 19th century. Tangier and Detroit’s decaying, dark and lonely atmospheres are the location in which Adam and Eve’s story is set. Adam and Eve are vampires, two thousand-year-old creatures who live in their own world made of music, art and literature in addition to the deep feeling that joins them.Adam is a talented and depressed musician, too emotional and often bored by his state. Whereas, Eve is a lively and open-minded woman, very proud of her eternity. Despite these differences, they live a centuries-old passion that is disturbed only by Ava (Eve’s wild sister)’s sudden arrival. Troubles caused by Ava’s hasty behavior force Adam and Eve to take a dangerous getaway and to restore their vampire animal-like nature.This movie, that doesn’t show many action scenes, is a night journey into main characters’ inner being and feelings. Their journey is associated with a magnificent soundtrack, which combines great classical rock songs from the 1950s and the 1960s and tracks expressly realized for the movie. Actors were very good and performed in an excellent way Adam and Eve and their gazes and gestures. A masterpiece not to be missed! Furthermore, the blue ray edition features a lot of extra contents, such as deleted and extended scenes, a behind-the-scenes documentary, interviews with actors, etc….

I don't know how I missed this one at the cinema, and only found out about it from a review of 2014's films. I would watch anything made by Jim Jarmusch and any film starring Tilda Swinton (I am Love, Orlando and even The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe!) so, to have a film involving both of these superb artists is a must-see. In fact, considering the left field approach of both Jarmusch and Swinton, I'm amazed that a colaboration like this was so long in coming. And to cast Swinton as a centuries old vampire is a stroke of genious. I've not seen any of Tom Hiddleston's films (and looking at his filmography I'm unlikely ever to). Absurd though the notion of the existance of vampires is, the depiction of Adam and Eve, along with John Hurt as Christopher Marlowe (who wrote all of Shakespeare's plays) as world-weary, immensely knowledgeable, deeply-in-love, vampires who have eschewed traditional blood-sucking for buying bags of blood, from crooked doctors, which they drink from vintage port glasses is so convincing. Adam's run-down house in Detroit is full of his own inventions, developed over hundreds of years, and even his old Jaguar XJS is powered by what seems like a kind of jet turbine engine. (When he takes Eve for a drive around Detroit he casually points out the house where Jack White lives!) The whole film exudes languid cool and the characters' resignation to their eternal existence in the shadows is wonderfully portrayed. A film I shall watch over and over. The sountrack is excellent, too, as is the album by Yasmine Hamdan, who features in the film ,both of which I subsequently bought.