“Even as buildings crumble around them and the ‘zombies’ — the term Adam uses to refer to mortal humans — pollute the Earth, Adam and Eve still have music and literature to keep this bizarre thing called life worthwhile.” – Jonathan Raeder
Immorality. The idea of living forever — or at least for much longer than our usual lifespans — is an addictive one, promising a release from the fear of death and a future of boundless possibilities. When contemporary films and stories tackle immortality, they tend to put it into one of two camps: Either immortality makes people’s lives torturous and not worth living, or life has meaning only if it ends.
Director Jim Jarmusch’s (The Limits of Control) Only Lovers Left Alive suggests those interpretations aren’t necessarily correct: Immortality really just is living a long time and spending the years reading, playing music and exploring the world. The film presents a “story” about two immortal lovers, vampires appropriately named Adam (Tom Hiddleston, Muppets Most Wanted) and Eve (Tilda Swinton, The Grand Budapest Hotel), in a short span of their immense lives. The two live apart — Adam in Detroit, Eve in Tangier, Morocco — but they’ve stayed in love for many centuries, spending their time leisurely absorbing and creating art.
The film is threaded with references to art in all its forms: Adam’s old Detroit house is filled with antique guitars and recording studio equipment while Eve’s bookshelves literally have collapsed under the immense collection of novels she speed-reads with relish. As the grand events and moments of life all fade away with time, the only true timeless elements, the film suggests, are love and love of art. Even as buildings crumble around them and the “zombies” — the term Adam and Eve to refer to mortal humans — pollute the Earth, Adam and Eve still have music and literature to keep this bizarre thing called life worthwhile.
Jarmusch’s films are known for presenting America through the lens of outsiders, and it’s hard to be more foreign than a vampire. Adam and Eve deride our more negative tendencies, yet Adam has a collection of photos hanging in his room of the famous historical people he admires — Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Nikola Tesla, etc. The two name-drop famous musicians and writers throughout the film — it seems Jarmusch uses them as a mouthpiece for his own tastes — but their love and respect for these artists manages to be relevant because it’s essentially the reason they keep living. They spend their time watching talent grow to fruition, enjoying its benefits, then watching sadly as it fades away, ready to be replaced by something new.
Despite its technical status as a vampire movie, Only Lovers Left Alive is more of a tiny slice of two vast lives, a short span with not much momentous happening. For those looking for more — or really, any — plot or a more passionate paranormal romance, the film will definitely disappoint. But it’s not trying to be anything more than a great hangout film, with vampires, of course. The lovers are likable, if a bit stiff at times, and the decaying Detroit and mysterious Tangier of the film are intriguing places to watch. At first, the idea of setting essentially half the film in Detroit seems strange. Detroit is a boring city, hollowed out and gasping its last breaths, which makes it perfect for a vampire’s hideaway, for an already melancholic man to skulk around the fossils and remnants of a beautiful opera house (now a parking garage).
Only Lovers Left Alive is definitely the work of an auteur, coursing with — or rather, languishing in — the lifeblood of Jarmusch’s vision. The film is slow-paced, mesmerizing in its lethargic portrayal of these two brooding lovers and highly suggestive of the immense time before and after this spot in their lives. Perhaps it could have benefited from a jolt of plot, and the script doesn’t give its two leads many opportunities to show their formidable acting talents. It’s also quite evident Jarmusch has a bit of a condescending attitude toward the “zombies” of today. Regardless, Only Lovers Left Alive is an intriguing picture of two lovers, unable to be torn apart, whose passion has faded to a simple reliance on each other and love for whatever life brings. It’s visually dark, surprisingly funny at times and wholly unique.
