Well I’m a dork. Only Lovers Left Alive is Director Jim Jarmusch’s vampire story for the well-educated artistic elite. This fun new twist on Vampires oozes cool from its nonexistent pores. Detached ironic tortured hipsters (I know how redundant that sounds) never looked so enticing.
Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a brooding musician living in solitude in Detroit. He uses Ian (Anton Yelchin) to get anything he needs so he can enjoy live as a self-loathing recluse. Adam is a vampire: a married vampire in fact. He is married to Eve (Tilda Swinton, mother of humanity) who is living in Morocco with an older vampire (played by John Hurt). Eve can sense Adam is in a fragile state, so she flies to Detroit to visit him. Also dropping by is Eve’s younger sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska), who threatens to pull Adam out of hiding and back into the world.
Director Jarmusch does a fun job putting a unique spin on the free love and rock n roll era of the 60s and 70s. Music from the era as well as the Detroit setting immediately transport the audience to a place out of time. The pace of Only Lovers Left Alive is lethargic, much like a rocker post injection or a vampire who cannot die would walk through life. There is pure and tainted blood (aka the fix). Casual disdain for the “zombies” free of thought. Ian is the dealer, and there is also a blood cooker (Jeffrey Wright). Only Lovers Left Alive showcases an eerily similar parallel between the life of a vampire and the life of a rock star. In this case, the vampire is also a rock star, which only amplifies Adam’s lethargy and time independent behavior.
The rock story is joined by a smart romantic comedy between two artists. Adam is clearly the self-reflective type dedicated to living and defending his worldview since it is always under intense scrutiny from himself. Eve follows love’s path; she is invested in nature and how the world operates, open to every experience life throws her way. These character types are nothing new, but Only Lovers Left Alive unfolds the story in a very new way. The vampire aspect means that these two have had millennia to fight, and now they can just enjoy each others company without much of a fuss. Because of Adam and Eve’s lives intertwining with history, there are references to historical figures and scientific studies in the present tense since the pair were contemporaries of these people at some point or another (amusing uses of literary characters like Faust or Christopher Marlowe). Only Lovers Left Alive deserves credit for not throwing contrivance in the story to force these two to fight; in addition, Eve is constantly overjoyed at her lengthy life and her education: a rarity in a vampire story.
The casting department clearly put some thought into their jobs for Only Lovers Left Alive. A more perfect couple than Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton simply does not exist. Hiddleston tones down his Loki bravado into a more subdued internal character. Adam is a blast in Hiddleston’s hands, showing wisdom and frustration/impatience often in the same scene but just maintaining a face. Swinton is every bit his equal; I’m used to seeing her in roles where she plays a callous character, but her Eve is so earthy and effortlessly enthusiastic that it makes sense why a vampire would lock her down for eternity. John Hurt takes a running gag about his character’s name and plays with it effectively. Jeffrey Wright and Anton Yelchin are very funny in their limited screen time. Mia Wasikowska is perky and sexual, but she brings little to a character that is mostly a plot device.
Twilight wishes it was as cool as Only Lovers Left Alive. Though very deliberate and mostly plotless, just a chance to be around characters like these make you feel like you just got accepted into a special club no one knows about. Kudos for Swinton and Hiddleston bringing back nighttime sunglasses and for making blood popsicles the new kids dessert craze.