Only Lovers Left Alive
(2013)
Jim Jarmusch’s instant vampire classic
tastes entirely fresh, despite the surfeit of entries in the bloodsucking genre
of late. I guess we should expect nothing less of the idiosyncratic auteur who previously
delivered indelible takes on the western (Dead
Man) and gangster genres (Ghost Dog:
Way of the Samurai). Only Lovers Left
Alive is a gorgeous, luxurious, melancholy yet invigorating affair, draped
with delectable performances and quietly boasting a distinctive and seductive
take on the lore. If the likes of Twilight
have done their best to dispel the mythos and drain it of fascination and lure,
Only Lovers galvanises and
replenishes it. It’s a diamond in the current rough of the genre, and one of
Jarmusch’s, no slouch even at his lowest ebb, best films. It is, simply, a
delight.
Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a reclusive vampire, musician and
amateur scientist living in Detroit. Over the centuries he has influenced
famous figures to the extent of giving them material yet now he finds himself
withdrawn and despondent. He requests local wheel-dealer Ian (Anton Yelchin) to
secure him a wooden bullet, with which he can end it all. Adam’s introspective
funk is interrupted by the return of wife Eve (Tilda Swinton). She embraces and
takes pleasure in the opportunities nourished by a vampire existence every bit
as much as Adam finds disappointment in it. Eve lives in Tangier with
Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), who, like Adam, has influenced the
considerably more famous. Together, Adam and Eve are simpatico. But their
reverie is interrupted by the arrival of Eve’s sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska), a
wild child out to have a bloody time and cause as much disruption as possible.
There’s no doubting that the lineage of Jarmusch’s vampires
– literate fashion-conscious, and artistic of bent – comes by way of Anne Rice,
but Only Lovers is not concerned with
Rice’s “metaphor for lost souls” or questions
of good and evil. And, if it presents a milieu in which vampires (mostly) no
longer feast on humans (“zombies”),
it has little interest in establishing a political text to this à la
True Blood (there’s no subtext in that
series, it’s all right there). The most one could say is that it is now politically
incorrect to kill; there is certainly no preoccupation with moral imperatives
(it’s also a nuisance to clear up afterwards).
While Jarmusch’s principal character is a tortured (soul), this comes
not from an existential crisis over his warring nature but simple basic
disillusion with the wretched mess humanity has made of the world.
Jarmusch also eschews Rice’s erotica of feeding, replacing
it with overtly chemical reactions. In a number of respects, Only Lovers at times feels like a
vampiric version of Drugstore Cowboy.
There are overdoses, bad batches, threats of discovery by the authorities and
interior processes of the addict’s existence. The vampire as junkie has been
done before, but not so reverently. Jarmsuch lingers on the blissful high that
comes from feeding (the camera lingers above ecstatic faces pointed heavenwards,
bloodied mouths locked in trouble-free open smiles) just as he plays with the
junkie’s language (“Is that the really
good stuff?”, “I got some bad stuff”).
During one stunning moment, a Tangier dealer offers Adam, “I have what you need”. The vampire rears towards him threateningly,
with an emphatic, “NOT what I need”;
the dealer retreats nervously into the darkness.
There’s much ritualistic behaviour; vampires drinking in
unison, with drug hazes drifting into the small hours (of course). The pupils of
this breed of the undead dilate when scenting blood (Adam memorably fixates on
a wounded leg in hospital). Bad blood can kill these them (which makes one
wonder how they got by during previous plagues and epidemics). We also see the
care Adam takes to conceal “his addiction”, reluctantly drinking blood in a
club when Eve and Ava do so first, with public displays running counter to his
more cautious instincts. Likewise, he has very specific ways and predilections;
Ava blunders carelessly into their world like a not-so bright young thing on
the way to her next rave, energised while Adam would rather wilt haughtily.
Yet it would do the picture a disservice to define it purely
in such terms. If Only Lovers is to
be read as a junkie tale, it is certainly not a cautionary one. Rather, it is most
defined by the seductive life of the aesthete; this is Jarmusch’s vision of
your not so friendly neighbourhood vampire. Aesthetes and the love that unites
them. Part of the picture’s appeal is how overpoweringly united Adam and Eve
are, even when they are apart. Theirs is a perfect, wish-fulfilment bond;
humorous, honest, passionate, mature (“Can’t
you tell your wife your problems?” asks Eve of her morose husband).
Jarmusch presents them very consciously as ying/yang forces.
Adam dresses all in black, his long lank hair and leather trousers suggesting
an ‘80s throwback medley of goth and rocker. Eve, also wild of hair (it’s
clearly a vampire mirror thing, although there are no bald vamps here) is
contrastingly clad in white, near-albino, right down to her i-phone. Jarmusch
isn’t afraid to overstate his case in any aspect of the picture (“Mephitis mephitis” observes Eve of a
monochrome skunk greeting her outside Adam’s abode), but most of the time he
gets a free pass because the world is so intoxicating. We sense that while
these two are together they will endure, and we want them to, living exemplars
of quantum entanglement theory.
Adam and Eve are highlighted by both their love of each
other and their love of art and finery. They are, particularly Adam, cultural
magpies. He surrounds himself with musical instruments of great age and beauty
(an early scene finds him exulting with Ian over classic guitars) (“I once saw Eddie Cochran play one of these,”
he comments before qualifying it with a hasty, “Yeah, on youtube”). Adam is interested in the craft and the true
expression of skill. And invention. He waxes as lyrical about science as he
does music, but devotes himself to the lost geniuses such as Nikola Tesla; it’s
only appropriate that an underground dropout artisan should prize a rejected
and alternative scientist.
And Jarmusch revels in this mix of drugs and imaginative,
freeform conceptualising. The line between science, art, and mysticism is a
thin veil, an alchemical concoction best illustrated by the scene in which Adam reveals his crackpot generator in the basement; it is based
on a Tesla design (“receiving electrical
information from the atmosphere”). Growing nearby are fly agaric mushrooms,
a gateway to another plane of thought, growing when they shouldn’t be growing (“Just goes to show, we don’t know shit
about fungi”) When Adam comments that life on this planet couldn’t exist
without them, it’s clear that Jarmusch is indulging favoured whimsies and
themes by propelling them from the mouths of those who know better; the
experienced and know-howed. The current state of science is not favoured by
Adam, as their greatest has been rejected and destroyed (“so much for the scientists”).
Adam has the air of the learned and cultured (Eve consumes
but feels less need to hold forth; she experiences and takes pleasure), so his
conceits are much more palatable than they otherwise would be. Urbane but
unhappy. When he explains all about a white dwarf that is a diamond that emits
the music of a gigantic gong, we think he must have been shooting up or indulging
some half-cocked poetry. Except that he’s dead-on. His techno-lash ups are like
a curious ‘70s version of steampunk; he spurns the 21st century
sleekness of Skype Eve for a cathode ray tube. It’s an appealing vision of one
who has values, even if this might be interpreted as Jarmusch looking towards a
nostalgic ‘80s reverie, when times were so much clearer. Only Lovers may not be as steeped in the mechanics of vampiredom as
The Hunger, but it is spiritually of
the same era and carries a similar sense of a strong emotional through line complemented
by stylistic foregrounding.
I don’t think Jarmusch is lacking in self-awareness of what
he’s presenting here. Adam’s indifference to the antique stethoscope everyone
else remarks upon highlights his own selective sense of culture and achievement
(his aged dressing gown likewise; one thing about vampires, they do like their
bathrobes). The elitist tendencies, as exemplified by the induction of Jack
White into not just the rock hall of fame but alongside any other great
creative, cultural, or artistic force that should be so namedropped (yes Jack
White sits in hallowed company alongside Shakespeare, Schubert – for whom Adam
composed a string quartet, Tesla and Byron), are a bit rich. White is a “true spirit”. But isn’t White the
middle-aged classic rockicist’s idea of a current great light? The kind of
person who stopped developing culturally during the ‘70s…
This rather serves to underline Adam’s rut. If he were truly eclectic he would embrace
the innovations of, say, dance music. Instead, Adam is affronted that Ava is
unable to see his new composition as anything other than something to add to
her playlist (“Can I get a download?”)
This might be overstating the case – he is clearly open to good music (and the
score is nothing if not distinctive, complete with a Dead Man-esque simple but insistent guitar riff) – but he also
evidently fears that he has lost his bearings, having dropped out of the ebb
and flow of humanity (“I needed a
reflection to see if it would echo back”); for Adam the artist needs an
audience to assess whether his art has value.
Jarmusch, always fond of lacing his films with intimations
of the unknown, be it the ephemeral odyssey of Dead Man or the ghost of Elvis in Mystery Train, has added free licence to do what he likes with
vampires as his subject. Yet he mostly sticks to rampant philosophising.
White’s talent is explained by his being a seventh son of a seventh son. Eve,
who takes as much pleasure in touching books as she does speed-reading them
(she can tell the age of objects through psychometry) holds the purest expression
of sensual pleasure. She is a visionary (“When
cities in the south are burning, this place will bloom” she says of
decaying Detroit; Swinton said Eve was a first century AD Bructeri druid) but
more importantly she nurses compassion and empathy for those around her. Eve
sees positives even in Ava and requests of Adam that they’re “just going to turn them, alright?” in
the final moments.
The name-dropping thing can tread a fine line, as it is in
danger of becoming a listing process in place of anything original. When it’s
playful (Adam’s “Dr Faust” meeting Jeffrey Wright’s “Dr Watson” to buy some
blood; Adam comes on like a an extra from a Cronenberg film), it’s fine. Eve
can’t get enough of anecdotes relating to the great and not so good, revelling
in how Adam played chess with Byron ( “Frankly,
he was a pompous ass”). We learn Shakespeare was an “Illiterate zombie philistine”. When we get to the point where Adam
is delivering a guided tour of Detroit, waxing lyrical about the “most beautiful cars in the world” at a
disused plant and a theatre that is now a car park, one can feel spittle of didacticism
and the danger of a lecture brewing. So it’s just as well Ava shows up.
It’s significant that, although Adam’s nostalgic discourses are
mostly fuelled by scintillating ideas or passions we can get behind, they comes
part and parcel with a suicidal malaise. He blames humans (“It’s the zombies and the way they treat the world”;
one can readily imagine him being inspired with the slang after seeing Romero’s
first …of the Dead movie) while Eve
mainly blames “Shelley and Byron and some
of those French arseholes he used to hang around with”. Eve has age and
experience on her side, and just generally a sunnier outlook. Adam has missed out
on inquisitions and floods and plagues, “real
fun”, which points out that his is the classic cantankerous despair of every
aging generation (as Jarmusch now finds himself, no doubt wondering and
despairing).
Adam has become stuck so it becomes necessary for “youth”
that releases him. We don’t know how long he has been like this, but it sounds
like a good couple of centuries (“Give my
regards to that suicidal romantic scoundrel” says Marlowe who clearly knows
his disposition well). As Eve replies to Adam when he comments on humans’ “fear of their own fucking imaginations”;
“How can you have lived for so long, and
still not get it?” Instead of maudlin introspection, he could spend his
time on the good things, the positive things (as she notes, he is pretty lucky
in love).
But Eve is too sympathetic to him to break him from his
state. It’s very nice to see Swinton in a wholly sympathetic role, not that
it’s not fun to see her do crazy and interesting parts, but her serene
acceptance here feels new, and she’s radiant and becoming. It’s the intrusion
of Ava that sets the cat among the pigeons. Adam and Eve are her de facto father
and mother figures, Marlowe the on-the-wane grandfather, in their uncommon
family unit. It’s left ambiguous whether Eve and Ava are actually related (or merely
fang sisters), but both display a zest for living in their own different ways;
which distinguishes them from the morose Adam. As Eve jokes to Adam on winning
at chess, “I’m a survivor, baby”.
Eve doesn’t share her sister’s blithe self-centredness (Ava’s
the classic petulant teenage party girl). She greets Ava sincerely with a hug, embracing
their family bind and nursing genuine feelings for her that Adam can’t even
contemplate (he’s still upset about “the
Paris thing” even though it has been 87 years since). If Marlow refers to
Adam as suicidal romantic, it’s Eve who extols the true romantic spirit. In the
final scene, she requests that they don’t kill the young couple on whom they
plan to feed. Not out of morality, but for the beauty of their love continued in
vampire form. Ava couldn’t be less like Adam; loud, unrefined and an
appreciator of lowbrow culture. His disdain at the ‘70s youtube music show clip
she is watching is funny and telling; it renders her appreciation of his music
is meaningless. She is also vital and primal, thinking with her bloodlust,
while Adam has receded into himself and indulges only when he absolutely has to
(or, at least, without passion).
So, when Ava kills Ian, it’s the spur to moving on that Adam
needs but cannot admit. Ian has been the perfect servant and companion, looking
in awe on this creator who makes great music and pays him handsomely (it’s
possible that Ian is passing on Adam’s compositions, but if so he surely only
really cares that Ian might have clumsily brought fans to his door, not that
his music is getting out there). Adam even says, “You
know, for a zombie you’re alright” and his resigned response (“Why couldn’t she just have turned him?”)
suggests a path whereby he might have continued with the status quo (but
really, Ian and Ava as constant companions would also have sent him running for
the hills, or Tangier, in no time).
The performers incarnate their roles to perfection.
Hiddleston, immaculately ruffled with a curtain of hair hanging over half his
face, is debonair, dry and depressed, but in a wholly engaging manner. It’s
difficult to conceive of Michael Fassbender (initially lined up for this) pulling
off the sheer louche refinement. He and Swinton demonstrate a seamless rapport,
and Jarmusch frequently frames them so as to reflect their entanglement, be it a
yin-yang nude tableau or the more literal entanglement of their interwoven
bodies. Yorick Le Saux’s tactile cinematography invites the viewer into their
darkness. It captivates even when the surroundings are the decaying Detroit,
and all the more so with comparatively floodlit Tangier.
Wasikwoska can do no wrong just now; not only is she working
with great directors, she’s doing great work for them. Yelchin nails the starstruck
wannabe; this is epitomised by the scene in the darkened club, where he
fumblingly puts on shades to copy his would-be peer group. If Ava hadn’t drunk
Ian, she would still have eaten him alive. Hurt and Swinton have great
chemistry, even if Jarmusch is perhaps less surefooted in characterising
Marlowe’s “true” achievements (the introduction, where Eve announces his
literary status, is a tad clumsy). A mention also for Wright, who makes Dr
Watson succinct but memorably witty in a mere couple of scenes (“Looking awfully pale there, Dr Caligari”).
If Adam has descended into Jarmusch’s more natural milieu,
the Tangier setting with, its two British ex-pats, evokes another bygone age.
This is a ‘50s spy novel where double agents and dirty dealings are replaced by
the threat of counterfeit blood. The references to different parts of the world
are less intrusive than the name-dropping. Jarmusch keeps the settings and mythology
at a distance, so allowing his characters to breathe (Neil Jordan’s also rather
good vampire yarn Byzantium also
succeeds by placing the characters first, and effectively capitalises on juxtaposing
their natures with the modern world). Adam and Eve were once in London but now
avoid it all costs (chucking bodies in the Thames might have something to do
with it). Ensuring all flight connections are at night is just another
mundanity of their existence.
As is his right, Jarmusch picks and discards elements of
vampire lore. Garlic is an old wives’ tale, but wooden stakes clearly are not.
This lot may succumb to blood poisoning (“What
do you expect? He’s from the fucking music industry” is the response to Ava
feeling queasy after sucking on Ian) and sustain injury (Marlowe is on
crutches, presumably through deteriorating health rather than life-as-a-human
trauma), so their fallibility is not in doubt. They can link psychically, and
move super-fast when they so wish. They have a thing for gloves when they are
out in the zombie world. They’re also a superstitious bunch (it’s bad luck to
cross a threshold uninvited – whether this is a cardinal rule with humans is unsaid
– as is listening to someone else’s music without permission, although that is
Adam just being dry). Such elements create a sense of the everyday reality of
their existence, rather than lives charged with perpetual excitement.
Only Lovers Left Alive
is Jim Jarmusch’s best film since Dead
Man, which may be his best film. It’s an exquisite, beguiling dream of a
film; for all the melancholy and despond of its chief protagonist, it arrives
at a place both affirmative and uplifting. We want these cultured “souls” to
abide; not only do they appreciate the finer things, they embody each other’s
immortal beloved. This continuance may
be their ultimate artistic expression, as nations fall and centuries subside.
