Sometimes it’s fun to imagine our favorite auteurs getting together the way we do with our friends. You picture Jim Jarmusch, Atom Egoyan and Abel Ferrara walking into a bar…maybe they give each other bro hugs. Jarmusch Instagrams black-and-white photos of ashed out cigarette piles next to a sweating beer bottle captioned “#TD4W”, Egoyan begins to ponder aloud if the New York Jets cheerleaders on the flat screen LED ever really knew their fathers’ love and Ferrara gets into a bar brawl to end the night.
While it’s a fun scenario to imagine, it’s highly unlikely
that bromances with the guys who made THE ADDICTION and THE SWEET HEREAFTER brought
Jim Jarmusch out of his filmmaking slump and inspired him to make ONLY LOVERS
LEFT ALIVE. It had probably had much
more to do with his relationship with music since the story revolves around a
vampire musician, Adam (Tom Hiddleston), who is becoming bored with the
idiosyncratic grind of an existence he is losing more control over as the world
around him rapidly (d)evolves. His only
remaining salvation is his wife, Eve (Tilda Swinton), who lives halfway around
the world, but senses trouble and travels back to him, inadvertently bringing
more complication into Adam’s life, mostly in the form of Eve’s
candle-in-the-wind sister, Ava, played by the formidable Mia Wasikowska.
The real triumph here is perfect casting. You have to admit from the first time we saw
that first image of Hiddleston and Swinton in each other’s arms decked out in
their full-on androgynous vampire regalia, you know were sold! In a perfect world Tom Hiddleston and Tilda
Swinton would make a movie playing a couple every year for the rest of our lives.
Their chemistry is simply astonishing.
It’s like there’s a hazy aura around them that drifts off the screen resulting
in pure cinephile bliss. Hiddleston
always has fun with wicked characters and even though Adam is sometimes mopey,
he never comes across as weak. There is
definitely a hidden swell that brims beneath him and occasionally shows flashes
throughout the film leading up to its climax. Tilda Swinton, a true treasure, plays Eve with
an aristocratic elegance spiced with only a hint of haughtiness. Mia Wasikowska is great, but definitely underutilized
as Ava. I felt like there was a lot more
they could have done with her character and what the actress’ talents bring to
the mix. Also in a smaller but key role,
John Hurt plays Marlowe, a vampire elder and father figure of sorts to Eve. Coupled with his performance in SNOWPIERCER,
Hurt has done some painfully brilliant work this year. Anton Yelchin and Jeffrey
Wright round out one of this year’s most talent-laden casts.
Jim Jarmusch seemed like he was in an epic creative slump
coming into this film. His last great
film was GHOST DOG (BROKEN FLOWERS sucked, but it seems like most people don’t
like to admit it because Bill Murray was in it). I personally don’t think he has ever equaled
DEAD MAN, but as with that film and GHOST DOG, the music of ONLY LOVERS LEFT
ALIVE is just as intrinsic as the performances here. The dreary soundtrack is haunting and paramount
in key scenes, particularly during the Tangier bar scene near the conclusion. And only the lens of a seasoned artist like
Jarmusch could make Detroit look so majestic onscreen. Jarmusch also seems to experiment more than
ever with his camera, which I always of think of as being mostly stagnant in
his work, but here it is whirling and cyclical, a metaphor for the nature of
the vampire’s existence of itself.
Jarmusch has given us a unique take on the vampire story and
in the process, has crafted an excellent film. While most vampire movies, including Ferrara’s
gritty take with THE ADDICTION, are about coping with life after becoming one,
this is about a vampire coping with an eroding world around him. It revisits past concepts that originally made
vampires so fascinating yet relatable—isolation, romance and, ultimately,
desperation. It’s a far cry from the
saccharine, glitter-stained bruises inflicted on the genre with an
oversaturation of awful YA novel adaptations. ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE is undoubtedly the best
vampire film since LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. And it’s even more refreshing to see that it
was one of cinema’s truest mavericks, Jim Jarmusch, as the one behind the camera
bringing this tale to life. For the
first time in a very long time, I am excited to see what he does next…more so
if bromances with other filmmaking heavyweights are remotely involved.
4/5 - Excellent
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