I’m more of a Stax
girl, myself. —Eve (Tilda Swinton)
Typical of what’s happening today in the movie industry, Jim
Jarmusch indicated this film was seven years in the making due to an inability
to obtain funds to make the movie, as American backers dropped out, so he had
to search for European financing. And
while Tilda Swinton and John Hurt were onboard throughout the lengthy ordeal,
Michael Fassbender was eventually replaced by Tom Hiddleston, where it’s
impossible to think of the film without him, as Hiddleston’s imprint is all
over this film, especially the slowed down pace of lethargy that captures the
creepy feel of vampire characters that have lived for centuries. Hiddleston plays a worldly vampire with
connections to a centuries earlier golden age in science, literature, music, and
the arts, once friends with Schubert, and authors Shelley and Byron, now a
depressed underground musician, aka Adam, whose spacey, mournfully hypnotic
music Only lovers left alive | Adam's
music YouTube (1:49) played on retro equipment brings back opium-induced thoughts
of the hallucinogenic world of APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) and is reminiscent of an
earlier 60’s era of Lou Reed with the Velvet Underground, yet he plays the part
of a reclusive rock star who makes psychedelic new music while in hiding, much
like Mick Jagger as Turner in Nicolas Roeg’s PERFORMANCE (1970). Only Gus van Sant’s LAST DAYS (2005) captures
the same dreary mood, a portrait of a suicidal Cobain-like musician’s final
days where nothing much happens, but he similarly retreats from reality and
ignores everyone, lost in a haze of oblivion.
This atmospheric funk is beautifully realized by Jarmusch’s choice to
shoot the film in the empty ruins of the economically ravaged Detroit, which he
calls “a decimated city.” Truly representative
of a city in decay, we return to constant images of empty downtown streets and
the remnants of an industrial wasteland, where the residents feel like ghostly
inhabitants of a once thriving city. Living
in a dilapidated Victorian house in a deserted area on the outskirts of town, looking
like the morbid set for a Halloween movie, Adam collects vintage electric
guitars, builds his own underground electronic grid, but also has various
electronics memorabilia like a 50’s TV, a 70’s phone, while playing classic turnstyle
LP records like Charlie Feathers “Can't Hardly Stand It” CHARLIE
FEATHERS Can't Hardly Stand It - YouTube (2:52).
On the other side of the globe living in Tangiers, with the
streets cast in a golden hue, is Adam’s wife Eve (Tilda Swinton), a collector
of books in every language, which she’s able to fathom simply by running her
fingers over the pages. Dressed in a
hijab covering her hair and neck, Eve literally glides through the empty
streets ignoring the men popping out of dark corners promising “We’ve got what
you want,” as she proceeds to a near empty café where she meets fellow vampire Marlowe
(John Hurt), Shakespeare’s contemporary and her longtime lover/confidante who
hoards his secret that he secretly penned Shakespeare’s works, while also being
her blood supplier, offering her a taste of “the good stuff.” These vampires have long ago sworn off
attacking human victims, who they call “zombies,” claiming they’ve tainted the
blood supply with their careless lifestyles and reckless disregard for their
health. Adam has a black market procurer
(Jeffrey Wright) in the blood supply section of the hospital, where he arrives with
a large wad of cash dressed in a doctor’s gown posing as Dr. Faust or Dr.
Caligari, where getting their fix is like feeding a heroin habit, as they’re
seen going through a rush of euphoria, with fangs starting to protrude. Adam uses Ian (Anton Yelchin), in awe of the
man’s genius and one of his biggest fans, but also a naïve stoner kid as his
Renfield, a go-between to the outside world, while also using him, no questions
asked, to track down hard-to-find specialty items, like vintage guitars or
recording equipment, and even a specially-made wooden bullet. When Eve realizes the extent of his deep
gloom, she decides to board to flight to Detroit, packing Dostoyevsky and David
Foster Wallace, wasting no opportunity as they reminisce about their glory
years, as Adam recalls when they hung out with Byron, “a pompous bore,” or
wrote an Adagio movement for Schubert, and recalls with affection meeting Mary
Shelley. When asked what she was like,
Adam snarls “She was delicious.” Not
since SID AND NANCY (1986) have we seen such a dreamily lethargic and quietly
disengaged couple, where he drives her through the empty streets of Detroit at
night, past the deserted Roxy Theater and the Michigan Theatre, which is now used
as a parking lot, where they seem alone in the vast desolation of boarded up
warehouses and factories. “How can you
have lived for so long, and still not get it?” she reminds him. “This self-obsession is a waste of living. That could be spent on surviving things,
appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship… and dancing!” Suggesting he might show her the Motown
studios, she responds, “I’m more of a Stax girl, myself,” grabbing her partner off
the couch as she chooses to play a Denise LaSalle song, “Trapped by a Thing
Called Love” Only
Lovers Left Alive - Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton dancing YouTube (2:00),
which just happened to be released on the Detroit-based Westbound Records
label.
Shot entirely at night by Yorick le Saux, with an
extraordinary score from Josef van Wissem and Jarmusch’s own band Sqürl, Jozef Van Wissem
& SQÜRL - The Taste Of Blood YouTube (5:54), where it’s easy to lose
yourself in the feedback and trance-like psychedelic guitar sounds where the
desolation of the vampire underworld stretches to an endless abyss. The opening forty minutes or so are riveting
and show great promise, but peters out a bit by the end, where the
sophistication and urbane wit of Adam and Eve represent a kind of cultured,
upper class variety of vampire, where Jarmusch has created a uniquely original,
alternate universe existing right alongside the present that sarcastically
comments upon the superficiality of the modern era where there’s scarcely a
genius left alive, no one to challenge their infinite knowledge, forcing them
to withdraw ever further into themselves, yet constantly needing to feed, resembling
drug addicts. The film perks up with the
arrival of Eve’s naughty kid sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska), a cute but
mischievous brat vampire whose unstoppable impulses are a destructive force of
nature, returning to the reckless carnage and instability of youth, bringing
nothing but turmoil into their orderly lives.
They make an appearance at an underground music club, hoping to be
inconspicuous, but Ava’s continued flirtatiousness draws unwanted attention,
where the kick-ass music, however, is White Hills “Under Skin or by Name” White Hills - Under Skin or by Name
YouTube (5:40) and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club “Red Eyes and Tears” Black Rebel Motorcycle
Club - Red Eyes And Tears YouTube
(3:59). Despite this surge of energy,
it’s only a reminder throughout time of family dysfunction and the capacity for
humans to destroy the world they live in, which includes, among other things, the
contamination of the blood supply. Of
note, John Ajvide Lindqvist’s recent take on the vampire novel, which led to
Tomas Alfredson’s film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008), was similarly concerned
with the harmful effects of “impure blood.”
This leads to the question of whether vampires can survive under these toxic
modern conditions, which, of course, looking at the nearly demolished picture
of Detroit, is a question we should be asking ourselves? How does a city’s destruction, caused by the
unconscionable eagerness of people or corporations (like Ava) to thoughtlessly
serve only themselves, benefit anyone?
Through the perspective of centuries, we are at a particularly
noteworthy crossroads in determining just what kind of future we’ll have, yet
Ava’s gratuitous self-centered greed and her childlike refusal to see the bigger
picture suggests a dire future, emblematic perhaps of those ineffectual voices
currently haggling over world peace, where self interests above everything else
certainly places the planet at even greater risk. Of course, it wouldn’t truly be
representative of a Jarmusch vampire format unless the future of the human condition
was utterly dismal.
