Thoughts on "Only Lovers Left Alive"

Is there any genre more worn out than the story of vampires (perhaps the rom-com)? It’s not like we needed another one, but Jim Jarmusch has breathed new life in to the desiccating corpse by making, well, a Jim Jarmusch movie. If you went into Only Lovers Left not realizing it was about vampires, it might take a while to catch on (probably by the point they start downing some blood and reacting like they just shot-up heroin). The signifiers of vampirism have been stripped and what remains is a droll, lushly gloomy mood piece. Jarmusch is more content to soak up dripplingly melancholy atmosphere and observe his protagonists, married vampires fittingly named Adam and Eve (Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton), as they barely muster up the energy to keep existing after centuries of just that. They look – with frazzled states of dress and unkempt hair -- and act exhausted, and while mentions of adventures with historical figures and events hint at a once vibrant life, they, like the central setting of Detroit, feel like they’ve seen better days (Setting the majority of the film in a city like Detroit feels like a wonderful, understated joke, another way of removing the romanticism that has come to seep into the genre). They're anachronisms of a more cultured, literate time watching the world give itself over to the digital and short-attentioned. Jarmusch isn’t too keen on plot, outside of the late arrival of Eve’s reckless, care-free sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) shaking up the endless languor. Instead, he is more interested in giving us a sense of the rituals that come with being a vampire, noting small details of what perpetual, never-ending existence really entails. For instance, the way Adam and Eve fetishize cultural items, such as books or guitars, they have become attached to, or the manner in which they acquire blood. A fair amount of this Jarmusch uses towards his signature, dry wit, humor so rigorously deadpan it doesn’t always register immediately. Jarmusch balances between finding humor in playing around in such an overly familiar genre and in giving his own revisionist spin on the tired tale. Like last years’ vampire flick Byzantium, but to an even greater and less commercial extent, Jarmusch depicts life as a vampire as an existential crisis, filled with longing, desperation, and sadness. But for all its apparent, lingering ennui, Only Lovers refuses to be solely a downtrodden affair but also a thoroughly sensuous one, in a dreamily, other-worldly way, reminiscent of Wong Kar-Wai. The warm invitation also comes due to the central couple, who's romance remains swooning, even as all these centuries have passed. There is a distinct pleasure to be had from being invited into this abode, crossing the threshold into this strange place with the weary figures who reside there.