Pete Croatto, Cinematters, May 2014

Only Lovers Left Alive

Some directors have devoted followings. Jim Jarmusch is one of them, though I’ve never felt an obligation to pledge fidelity. I appreciate how he has made movies his way. His tendency, in my opinion, to consciously divorce his feelings from his work? Not so much. This is not the poker face that Todd Solondz and Steven Soderbergh employ. It’s like Jarmusch refuses to sit at the table and play a hand. He’d rather talk to the security guards.

That’s why I have a hard time processing Jarmusch’s latest, Only Lovers Left Alive. The movie brims with brittle humor, sly intelligence, and optimism. In detailing the humdrum middle of married vampires Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton), Jarmusch slowly and poetically tells the sad story of us.

Adam and Eve are snobs, ageless aging hipsters. Adam is a reclusive, despondent rock musician with a principled aversion to technology. When he communicates with Eve via video, he routes her image so it appears on his ancient television. The past is a fetish: the old guitars with older stories, the wads of cash, the hunk of American steel he pilots through Detroit’s endless darkness.

Eve is in Tangier for vague reasons, though explanation is unnecessary. The couple is embroiled in their own dusty pursuits. She’s more in tune with her vampire friend and blood supplier Marlowe (John Hurt), who (surprise) wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Books consume Eve; she practically breathes them in. Her trip to see Adam includes a suitcase packed with books, the youngest of which appears to be David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996). 

Her other gift is to look at an object—a stethoscope, a variety show—and instantly guess its age. Adam and Eve’s relationship lives on the appreciation of things past, which puts them in constant competition to see who is more insufferable. Dig this exchange as he drives her around Detroit.

Adam: I can show you the Motown Museum.

Eve: I’m more of a Stax girl.

Of course, she is.

Why aren’t these two, clearly the last of a dying breed, gawking at Jack White’s childhood home instead of hunting fresh bodies? Their means of survival have softened. Adam lives in Detroit, but to paraphrase Heather Graham’s character in Bowfinger, he doesn’t live in Detroit. His devoted human assistant (Anton Yelchin) gets him anything no questions asked, including a specially made bullet. He only leaves the house to get blood from a hematologist (Jeffrey Wright) at the local hospital. Detroit is a place Adam can mope around before gentrification hits and hat stores line the block. It’s a city of ruins. No wonder he feels comfortable and why he can’t stand Eve’s younger, energetic sister (Mia Wasikowska, who’s wonderful). Her Los Angeles-inspired party habits represent the apotheosis of evil in his world.

Aren’t we following Adam and Eve’s path? Everything we possibly want is available via keypad, so we have more time to become fussbuckets. Even the vampires, those symbols of Hollywood cool, aren’t immune. Adam’s greatest passion is complaining about today’s world. It’s the worst, and he was around for the Middle Ages. The future? Terrible. When he notices colorful mushrooms sprouting in his backyard, he complains that they’re out of season.

Having lived through centuries, Adam and Eve should know things change. (The delicious aspect of Hiddleston and Swinton’s performances is they act as if being a vampire is like being a Lou Reed fan. It’s easier to roll your eyes and quietly seethe then explain to the hoi polloi why Metal Machine Music matters.) They should know that inspiration and invention arrive to get us through the next challenge. Similarly, we “zombies,” Adam’s endearing term for humans, have endured existential crises for centuries. Every generation has. Somehow we survive so our sons and daughters can repeat the cycle. 

Jarmusch spends most of Only Lovers Left Alive skewering us—our laziness, our affinity for complaining, our ability to rhapsodize for the ever-elusive simpler time—yet he spares our feelings. We’ve been through a lot. We’re about to go through more. The last thing we need is another lecture. That Jarmusch would provide a pep talk is as welcome as it as astonishing. [R]

An ICON contributor since 2006, Pete Croatto also writes movie reviews for The Weekender. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Broadway.com, Grantland, Philadelphia, Publishers Weekly, and many other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @PeteCroatto.

P.O. Box 120 • New Hope, PA 18938 • Voice 800.354.8776 • Fax 215.862.9845 • www.icondv.com • www.facebook.com/icondv