When I watch a Jim Jarmusch film, I always feel a fresh sense of engagement with the world. If Jarmusch is capable of boredom or disenchantment, the works I’ve seen don’t show it. Movies like Mystery Train, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and Paterson are testaments to their characters’ passion and attentiveness.
None of us will live forever, but Jim Jarmusch, I think, would enjoy it.
That makes him the ideal director to tackle a vampire movie that is, at its core, about immortality. Only Lovers Left Alive dabbles—gleefully, at times—in more familiar territory: for all its jewel-toned beauty, it knows there’s nothing wrong with a little cheese. Let’s have some fangs. Some sensuality. Bring on the Byronic angst and ennui. (You don’t cast a post-Loki Tom Hiddleston and not know what you’re doing.) Indulge in some name-dropping, because of course cool vampires knew—and sometimes were—cool people. And psychic powers are a classic.
Only Lovers Left Alive isn’t trying to yes-but its way out of counting as a vampire movie. But the part of vampirism it’s most interested in isn’t the blood-sucking or the alienation, it’s the perspective. Who do you become, when you live through era after era? Who had you better become, if you want to enjoy it?
Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston) have been married for hundreds of years—their “third wedding” picture looks like it could have been taken by Mathew Brady—and by now they live apart, maybe for years, casually and insignificantly, with no more worry about it than a husband and wife working separate jobs. Can’t spend every minute together. But they also can’t live without each other, as fellow vampire Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt) affectionately notes.
Adam’s depressed enough to be special-ordering wooden bullets from his Boy Friday, music world fixer Ian (Anton Yelchin). The “zombies,” he says, are ruining the world. He sees some of the damage firsthand, living in a shattered Detroit neighborhood, driving through a city haunted by its own thriving past. But Eve, as luminous as Adam is shadowy, uses her sense of history to perceive the coming future, not just the vanished past: “This place will rise again. … There’s water here. And when the cities in the South are burning, this place will bloom.”
Eve has more hope than Adam, and therefore less sentimentality: she won’t mourn what won’t stay dead, and she understands how replaceable most things are when you have world enough and time. She’s the only sun Adam has—not only do Jarmusch’s vampires hide from the day, they wear sunglasses where they can’t control the light—and he grows towards her. It’s easy to see that he always has.
That’s a dynamic Jarmusch likes, but he never leaves it stranded in Manic Pixie Dream Girl territory. Eve and Adam have a true relationship with an obvious foundation, and they mirror each other as much as they contrast. They’re both devoted to their artistic corners of the world—Eve to her books and languages, Adam to his music and jury-rigged technology—and to their respective cities—Detroit and Tangier. They feel the richness of place and time.
Like Paterson, this is partly like Jarmusch’s treatise on marriage, on enduring love, but it’s also just a treatise on joyfully, peacefully enduring in general. Be interested, in people and the world. Care about things; it’ll make you easier to be around. Try not to let annoying family members visit too often, especially when they eat you out of house and home. All good rules of thumb.
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Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Streaming Shuffle
A beautiful slice-of-life film that helped make a career.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Kojak, “Out of the Shadows” – In the heat of the summer (the second time in four episodes set in a heat wave), a serial killer is stabbing people to death. And then leaving spray painted messages about his grievances. Or is he? A gritty and tough episode, with angry cops crossing lines, a sad sack who blames all of his failures on everyone else, and a couple of smart twists. Even if some of this makes little sense. Guests include Salome Jens and occasional detective Bruce Kirby, billed as Bruce Kirby Sr. since his son had yet to call himself Bruno.
Frasier, “Frasier Loves Roz” – Roz is dating a man Niles is treating and knows is a womanizer. Niles told Frasier before they knew Roz was dating him, and now Frasier cannot break them up without violating professional ethics. But Roz is sure that Frasier’s dislike of the guy is because Frasier’s fallen for her! An interesting episode because at the end, Roz tells Frasier she knows he has fallen for her, and rather than denying it, Frasier kind of does, but both realize that it’s not worth messing with a good friendship. And it’s not.
NBA Play-In Game, or at least some of it. I didn’t stay long enough to see Trae Young melt down. Oh that I had.
Justified, Season One, Episode Six, “The Collection”
This episode contains two entirely separate moments where Raylan sums up his – and to an extent, the show’s – morality. “I think people are entitled to their hobbies, and I’m entitled to think those people are creepy,” of course, sums up what I’ve already gone into with his comfort at judging and general refusal to act on that. The other is when he gives the criminal o’ the week a moist little speech about thinking about killing his ex-wife’s new partner, only to recognise that he would have to kill quite a few more people on top of him (“If you did that, where would it end?”). The woman who leads the criminals this week has two classic moments of Justified, where she claims a bit of knowledge from a documentary she saw on Discovery Channel, and where she tries blackmailing her (already nervous) partner. This is a show about people who keep pushing their luck because they think they can get away with it.
Raylan has his moments too, though; his moments threatening Gary come off like the very criminals he chases and just make him look incredibly silly. Women are straight up his weakness, as much as they are for Vic Mackey; all reason just flies out the window and he keeps escalating and escalating. This show has some of the same sense of consequence as The Shield, but it feels like there’s an extra edge it hasn’t quite found yet.
Boyd comes back to open and close this episode, and it’s amazing how the Goggins manages to embody everything that Raylan isn’t; a mystic driven by total belief (“I love that word, ‘nebulous’, it means ‘hard to define’.”). He’s the perfect foil to Raylan and Olyphant, and it’s why they have sizzling chemistry.
Biggest Laugh: “I wanna know! Was he funnier than me? Smarter? Does he have more money, bigger house, bigger dick?” / “Yes, no, no, err, ah, I didn’t measure.” / “Wait. Run the order of that by me again.” This was even funnier having the order of her answers laid out for me.
Top Ownage: Raylan defeating jurisdiction crap: “US Marshalls owns this house now. You wanna pay us for a new door?”
That line about hobbies always cracks me up. And while the detail of Hitler always being revealingly bad at painting peoples’ faces is probably too obvious, it also completely works for me–as does the ultimate reveal of “the collection.”
Their faces in the background at the first mention of ‘Hitler’ cracked me up. And then they kept hearing it until they just had to ask!
Also, with the performance William Ragsdale is giving here as Winona’s husband, we have perfect casting for old Kelvin Gemstone if McBride ever wants to flash forward.
Babylon 5 — a weird two-parter that really feels padded, while there is more time spent with characters hanging out it is odd to have this much not-doing-plot-shit activity and it’s an interesting reminder of how the show’s episodic structure may be pre-Prestige but is very functional. And Ron Canada is here being pissy and arrogant! So much better than the wretched teen actor in the previous episode, we kick around Prestige but it knocked this kind of wide-eyed theatrical shit into the grave where it belongs.
I think it bears repeating that I saw Jim Jarmusch at the NY State Sheep and Wool Festival a few years ago. Come to think of it, he was wearing sunglasses and the day wasn’t particularly bright…
Doctor Who, “The Robot Revolution” – kinda forgot that this was coming back, but I was too tired for anything more serious last night and this fit the bill perfectly. A slightly rushed but fun return, with some fantastic FX and visual style – the retro-futuristic robots and rockets looked amazing. They did a good job quickly introducing the new companion too, and her more reluctant, “I’m only here because I have to be” dynamic feels like it has potential. A few really funny lines too, I guess I just wish the story had a little more room to breathe but considering all the new-season setup required here, it was very good.
Spider-man – The Raimi film, of course, I don’t have time to march my kids through the thirty hours of context they’d need to watch the MCU editions. And here’s where it all began, a crazy box office for a story we all knew. The enormous amount of context I gave did not help its cause with my kids. I forget that the standard now is no fewer than three Spider-mans per movie, so this was pretty tame.
Jim Jarmusch is probably the ultimate Cool director, and this is a lesser film by him because it’s ‘just’ cool without anything extra on top. Butn it’s amazing how he makes the ‘whiny vampire’ trope cool simply by recognising that making music and dicking about are insanely cool, and getting to do that forever would rule. Which is essentially my way of saying that your essay is correct, but I felt it had to be said.
It does have to be said. And I feel that even Carpenter, one of our past examples of the quintessentially Cool director, would agree Jarmusch deserves the crown.
Carpenter achieves Cool, which you can tell because he sometimes chooses not to. Jarmusch simply is Cool, without thought or effort.
“This place will rise again. … There’s water here. And when the cities in the South are burning, this place will bloom” is making me think of the king of the vampires in Garth Ennis’ Hellblazer run, reminiscing on sucking the blood out of the first man on earth and idly dreaming of traveling to a new planet when this one is destroyed. Ennis fucking hates this guy and Cassidy in Preacher aside he shits on vampires quite a bit, I think there is some unpleasant quasi-homophobia in the mix there (Anne Rice-style vamps get the worst of it) but the real anger comes from the perspective that timelessness brings. In Ennis’ view it doesn’t lead to a focus on details but a disdain for them, with humans as the least important details of all. And it’s hard for me to not see a little of that in Swinton’s quote, with the bloom coming as all those bugs down south are roasting. But I really need to get around to this, because while I don’t trust vampires I do trust Jarmusch.
I think that kind of callousness is the potential downside, and we do see some of it here, especially in Hiddleston’s disdain for humans as “zombies” (while carving out exceptions for the people he likes, like Yelchin’s Ian or his beloved scientists). But it does exist alongside the appreciation of the details, so the negative angle feels more cynical than nihilistic.
Year of the Month update!
May’s year will be 1962, so you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
May 2nd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Moon Pilot
May 9th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Bon Voyage!
May 15th: John Bruni: L’Eclisse/Il Sorpasso
May 16th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Big Red
May 23rd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Almost Angels
May 30th: Gillian Rose Nelson: In Search of the Castaways
And there’s still time to sign up for any of these movies, albums, books, et al from 1999!
TBD: James Williams: 10 Things I Hate About You
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez – Summerteeth/The Soft Bulletin/Utopia Parkway
TBD: Lauren James – Storm of the Century
Apr. 18th: Gillian Rose Nelson: The Hand Behind the Mouse
Apr. 21st: Bridgett Taylor: Fight Club
Apr. 24th: Cori Domschot: The Matrix
Apr. 25th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Disney on DVD
Apr. 29th: Dave Shutton: American Pie/Class of 1999
I haven’t seen this, but I read it as apparently a number of you think I might be one of the vampires from this movie… And “This place will rise again. … There’s water here. And when the cities in the South are burning, this place will bloom” are the kind of thoughts I’ve had about possibly moving to Detroit, so… I guess I’m not helping any case of mine here. I sure seem to be aging like a mortal, though.
I wrote it up partly in your honor!