Jim Jarmusch doesn’t make mainstream movies, seemingly as a rule, so the idea of him taking on one of the sub-genres that has been dominating mainstream storytelling over the last decade or so—the vampire story—is an intriguing one. Surely his latest release, this tale of an ancient and bloodsucking pair of immortals called Only Lovers Left Alive, would have to be different from the sex and action oriented vampire stories like Blade, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Twilight that have dominated the social consciousness as of late, wouldn’t it? Absolutely. And it’s probably even more removed from the horror-heavy monster movies that originally brought the concept of the vampire to the big screen. Though Only Lovers Left Alive does indeed feature a pair of protagonists whose vampirism sticks closely to the vampire myth as it’s come to be popularly accepted, their story is still one that plays as being unmistakably Jarmusch.
The vampires in question are a centuries old married couple named, cheekily, Adam and Eve. They’re played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton, which, if you know anything about Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton, is a very exciting proposition. When we first meet them, the lovers are living apart. Adam seems to be depressed at the state of the world and is perhaps growing weary of the ceaselessness of his eternal life. Despite being a fairly famous musician, he lives anonymously and seclusively in a crumbling compound in Detroit, where he surrounds himself with antique relics and seemingly refuses to treat himself to any modern conveniences. His only regular contact comes in the form of a runner he employs named Ian (Anton Yelchin). The kid is a little overzealous, and might be leaking a bit too much information about Adam’s productivity and possible location to the music community, but in general seems to be discreet, and is always able to dig up the best vintage guitars. This movie is like porn for people who love old instruments.
Eve’s existence, comparatively, seems to be a lot less dramatic. She’s shacked up in Tangier, regularly leaves her apartment in order to soak up the city’s color and score her latest fix of human blood (through non-murdery connections with a French doctor, of course), and even spends quite a bit of time palling around with writer Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), who happens to also be a vampire, and who did indeed write all of those great plays that Shakespeare took credit for. Heck, she even has an iPhone. The forward momentum of the story, such as it is, begins when she senses Adam’s growing despair and decides it’s time she goes out to Detroit so that they can be reunited. A real dramatic turn then takes place when Eve’s frivolous sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) also comes calling. To say that her devil may care attitude and Adam’s stern fatalism don’t blend well would be an understatement, and soon there’s conflict that eventually leads to their being a mess that needs to be cleaned up.
If the story details given above appear to be a little vague, that’s because there really isn't a ton of story that’s being told here. Only Lovers Left Alive is more of a mood piece, and a study of what it might be like to have lived for centuries, all while watching more transient and temporary lives being birthed and then extinguished around you. The old world mysticism of Tangier and the decomposed modernity of Detroit both make for very evocative and remote settings, and from the spiraling, disorienting photography of the first sequence, it’s clear that Jarmusch is looking to take us to a place apart from the world we’re used to, and he’s trying to make us see things from a perspective that’s different from our own—and because of that his film ends up being pretty darned interesting.
With Hiddleston and Swinton in the lead roles, the true selling point of this film is the performances though, and in that respect it delivers as well. The script Jarmusch wrote isn’t flawless by any means. There’s a bit of clunkiness here and there, a couple of choices that one can’t help but shake their head at, but because the acting is so good, everything magically ends up working anyway. Adam could very well have come off as an unlikable curmudgeon, and could have sank the film with his chosen life of inactivity, but because Hiddleston is so inherently engaging, you actually end up sympathizing with his despair. The Eve character could have come off as being little more than a crazy outfit and hairdo, but Swinton is able to so effortlessly and authentically give off the vibe of being an otherworldly presence that there isn’t a moment where you doubt her authenticity. And the Ava character, in other hands she could have been viewed as merely being a plot contrivance, but in the hands of Wasikowska she ends up being an absolute joy to watch. These actors are all so good at selling the material they’ve been given that you’re even able to forgive the film for all of its cutesy literary references and its namedropping of famous outlaw artists. That’s impressive.
And what’s even more impressive is that you don’t necessarily get the performances that you’d expect. Hiddleston has captured the world’s imagination with his cockiness and charisma, and here he’s turned all of that almost completely off, while still giving a performance that demands to be paid attention to. Swinton is largely known for playing characters who swing to one end of the spectrum—they’re either manic and overcome with emotion, or severe and buttoned down. Eve, though, is calm and collected, having an almost Buddhist way of looking at (after?) life and dealing with the problems that come her way, and she too is able to hold your attention without doing much emoting. Heck, the main characters here are kind of dusty old relics, really, and the story told is a minimal one that moves at a deliberate pace. Probably this movie should have wound up being a bore. The stars are so engaging and the younger duo of actors inject things with enough energy that boredom never happens though.
The other reason Jarmusch is able to maintain your interest all the way through to the end is that he layers the time you spend with these characters full of themes and ideas that will leave you pondering over what you’ve watched long after the end credits roll. He uses the wisdom his old-ass characters have accrued to say quite a bit about the state of the modern world. Only Lovers Left Alive is a movie that’s steeped in nostalgia, and mournful for the wasted potential of humanity. There’s some hatred on display for modern culture and the inanity that its conveniences have brought to our lives that mostly comes from the Adam character, but it’s not easy enough to say that he’s a character that stands against humans. On the contrary, he seems to regard many of history’s great artists as heroes, and the contempt coming from him, and by extension the film, seems to be the sort that one has for an ex-lover, not the sort that one has for someone who was an enemy from the start.
The blood-drinking scenes in the film are also clearly supposed to invoke images of drug use, with the life on the fringes of society the vampires are living having more than a connection or two to the lives led by addicts. There’s even a sequence where Adam and Eve are in desperate need of a blood fix, which sees them stumbling around not unlike a couple of bleary-eyed junkies. The movie doesn’t go so far as to be about addiction though. Jarmusch’s script layers in some meaning, flirts with making a few statements, but never hammers home metaphors, which keeps things interesting without overstepping any bounds by trying to make the story “important” in any pretentious way. It’s often when a movie starts trying to be more that it is that you see the truly spectacular failures. Only Lovers Left Alive is assured in what it is, and ends up finding a bit of focus because of that, even as it’s never rushed to advance its plot.
By far the best thing about the movie though is that it tells its story from the perspective of an outsider. It presents being a vampire as something that’s dark and mysterious, and beyond the understanding of normal people. The best thing about the vampire myth is the way it plays into our desire to be the dangerous one, the dark one, the lone wolf who gets to exist in a world that’s more interesting than the one our neighbors live in. Too many modern vampire stories have tried to bring vampires into the mainstream and have missed the point in the process. Vampires aren’t glam rock and romance, they’re punk rock and one night stands. Only Lovers Left Alive may be more of a Jarmusch story than it is a traditional vampire story, but seeing as Jarmusch stories are usually about characters who live outside the mainstream, it still manages to get back to what’s cool about vampire stories nonetheless.
