Music of the Night By Christina Harlin, your Fearless Young Orphan Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) Directed by Jim Jarmusch
This classy vampire film strongly resembles two others we have already discussed: 1983’s vamp camp classic The Hunger (8/10 Fangs), and 2012’s gorgeous Kiss of the Damned (9/10 Fangs). All three tales are of a vampire couple, man and wife or something very much like it, who live their low-key life of opulence and blood and watching time pass as they remain largely unchanged. Only Lovers Left Alive takes a more apocalyptic viewpoint of the world: vampires Adam and Eve realize that the planet has been frigged up by humans and getting “uncontaminated” blood has become very difficult, thanks to disease, drugs and chemicals in the environment. They wonder what they are going to do, when things get tight.
Eve (Tilda Swinton, easily stealing the entire film) is a brighter, happier hedonist than her husband. Thousands of years alive have taught her that one must appreciate the little things, and appreciate the hell out of them, finding joy in the smallest details of reality. She comes to visit Adam when she hears the depression in his voice during a phone call which might have been prompted by a psychic link of quantum entanglement. It’s complicated. The two live apart sometimes, which makes sense – what spouses could really manage to live together for hundreds of years? Even cool sexy vampires need alone-time!
Adam has always been quick to embrace tragic romance; he’s a musician and a poet and can hardly bear up under his delicious misery. He may be considering suicide; Eve may detect this problem telepathically. Adam is played by Tom Hiddleston, who has gained a rabid following by playing Loki in the Marvel Comics movies and made a lot of ladies feel all tingly in their lady-parts (though not me particularly – funny that, because ordinarily a British accent is a sure thing). Ladies who seek out Only Lovers Left Alive to experience more cheeky, flirtatious Loki-fun are going to be disappointed, because Adam is a bummed-out, cantankerous, pouting grouch. He does take his shirt off fairly often and does one nude scene (not full frontal, sorry) so that might make you feel better.
Anyway there is not much in the way of a plot. This is the story of a couple in love. It is easy to see that they are soulmates, and love each other deeply. They are two sides of a coin. They love to share things, to show each other things. But for most of the two hours of the film, what we do is watch them sort of stroll around the dismal environment of Detroit, commenting on this or that. Detroit’s decay does present an interesting counterpoint to the persevering vampires, but I found this to be dragged out until it was borderline tedious. What saved me from utter frustration was Tilda Swinton’s charm and an absolutely amazing soundtrack. Eclectic music features prominently in the plot and in the background, and it’s a mix to set your soul afire.
The film picks up a bit when Eve’s troublesome sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) shows up look for blood handouts, money and fun. Ava is a Los Angeles vampire accustomed to a wild life. Maybe in L.A. nobody notices her. In Detroit, her antics draw attention. Adam and Eve have a very careful lifestyle that draws no attention. Adam has in place a complicated system for obtaining blood – buying it from a hospital blood tech in the middle of the night. Though Adam records and produces music which appears on YouTube and in clubs, he wants no one to know where he lives, working almost entirely alone save for his reliable gopher Ian (Anton Yelchin) who is well-paid to keep secrets – though maybe he doesn’t do as well as Adam hopes.
Ava doesn’t understand the need for such intense privacy. Her viewpoint is not, shall we say, geared toward self-preservation, Geez you two, get a room. which we can assume is how Adam and Eve have managed to stay alive this long. It’s really too bad that Ava gets kicked out of their home (and out of the movie) so soon because her pouty spoiled little slut was a much-needed breath of life. Or, un-life, as it were. When she left, I was rather wishing we could go with her.
No, Ava stays just long enough to kick up a real problem that forces Adam and Eve to flee Detroit, heading back to Tangier, where Eve has been staying near her friend Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt). Yes, that Christopher Marlowe. He has his own story to tell which adds a new spin to the whole controversy of “whether Shakespeare actually wrote his own plays.” I liked that the film appreciated the difficulty of travel for vampires, requiring flights only at night and layovers in particular cities where, I assume, they must hide out yet more. Adam and Eve arrive exhausted and starving in Tangier and then, oh crap, can’t find anything to eat.
Only Lovers Left Alive is a voluptuous-looking film full of little visual treats (both Adam’s and Eve’s abodes are such treasure-troves that you wish you could stop the film and dive in to go hunting through all their cool stuff). The music is gorgeous. Swinton and Wasikowska give great performances; Hiddleston is pretty good but isn’t playing a character who is easy to love. There is a sense of urgency to the story, of time running out, for humans and vampires alike, but there is hope too. Perhaps Eve’s theory of life—cultivate worthy things and enjoy small treasures—is a way that all things might be rescued.
The problem is that it takes us a long time to get through the story, and the movie is not always hypnotic enough to coast through the parts that drag. I have to give it an 8/10. I’m feeling guilty that I’m not giving it 9/10. That’s because sitting here and thinking about it, I’m recalling all the cool stuff, and forgetting that I was clock- watching, wishing the whole film were maybe twenty or even thirty minutes shorter, and that Hiddleston’s Adam was really kind of an emo whiner. I thought Eve could do better. Yes, 8/10, with the caveat that some people will find it to be a masterpiece, and some won’t make it past the first twenty minutes or so, and music-lovers will be ecstatic about the soundtrack.