ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE Revisited: Art, Time, and Immortality

The metaphor of vampiric immortality in Jim Jarmusch’s work becomes an ideal pretext for opening a reflection on the evolution of humanity and the culture it creates. It is difficult, after all, to call the newest work from the creator of Dead Man a “vampire film,” given the contemporary pop-cultural connotations of this specific genre of cinema. In Only Lovers Left Alive we won’t find the teenager-adored image of a friendly vampire youth who enjoys hair gel and young, naïve mortal girls, while simultaneously being a model high-school student. There is also a lack of wild sex scenes and exposed male muscles in the style of Eric Northman from True Blood.

The sugary, sex-drenched image of the vampire has taken such firm root in pop culture that it is difficult to find, in contemporary films dealing with vampirism, the once-cultivated image of the aristocratic vampire, the dandy, let alone a trace of the archetypal vision of a ruthless, impulse-driven, animalistic murderer hungry for human blood. That’s why any vampire film entering cinemas sparks anxiety among the anti-fans of the Twilight saga. But not this time. If Jim Jarmusch takes up this subject matter, and with such a cast, there is nothing to fear.

As the director argues, the twenty-first-century vampire has tamed his hunting instinct. He is able to control his hunger and has learned to coexist among humans, not interfering too much in their lives, and naturally expecting the same from them. Adam (Tom Hiddleston) — the main character of Only Lovers Left Alive — is a sensitive vampire-musician embodying the traits of a melancholic-decadent (as well as an egocentric), trying to find meaning in existence through art and science.

The protagonists, contrary to the archetypal qualities of the vampire, are allies of the world of science, attempting to control their impulses. Adam rejects the reality of mortals, whom he contemptuously calls zombie-living corpses, devoid of sensitivity, lost in their vanity, and consumed by consumerism. The figure of the vampire becomes a universal personification of the Other, a being struggling with loneliness, rejection, and social ostracism, as well as a metaphor for the dark side of the personality within every human and the eternal struggle between the drives of life and death.

In Only Lovers Left Alive, vampirism becomes a metaphor for time, the evolution of culture, and civilization. Immortal vampires know what will happen when history once again comes full circle, when the entire legacy of civilization is destroyed only to be reborn anew, allowing new generations to repeat the same mistakes.

Adam and his beloved Eve (Tilda Swinton) become symbols of knowledge and experience, observing the history of the homo sapiens species, which is slowly heading toward annihilation, showing greater and greater ignorance toward Mother Nature. Only they reject the materialism of daily life, worrying about their continued existence in a world poisoned by zombies who contaminate not only the environment but also their own bodies, which are, after all, factories of food for ethereal vampires.

The titular lovers understand perfectly that only true emotions, love, and aesthetic experiences can give existence meaning by satisfying spiritual needs. The cult of physicality and the consumerist lifestyle, present also in pop-cultural creations, disrupt the vampires’ inner harmony. Although Adam’s snobbery is largely a subject of ironic critique (and perhaps even the director’s self-critique), it essentially reveals the burden of the impossible-to-control need to create, a weight carried by every artist who leaves a piece of themselves in the work they create.

Only Lovers Left Alive is a perceptive treatise on art, its role in the contemporary world, and a fantastic portrait of the artist. And it must be added that this is one of Jim Jarmusch’s most autobiographical works, smuggling — chiefly through Adam — all the anxieties of an artist who refuses to submit to mainstream rules.

Jarmusch does not shy away from intertextual references, constantly winking at the viewer, finding room in his work even for Christopher Marlowe — the playwright shrouded in legend, or rather one of the most famous conspiracy theories created by Calvin Hoffman, according to which Marlowe was the actual author of Shakespeare’s greatest works.

The names of the main characters (though the director claims parts of the script were inspired by Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Adam and Eve), the Schubert string quartet that is supposedly one of Adam’s works — given his commitment to artistic anonymity — the portraits of his “friends” hanging on the wall (including Byron, Einstein, Kafka), and all the other, in fact quite amusing, intertextual references complete the director’s characteristic signature while providing viewers with great pleasure as they discover more and more allusions to familiar history — which here becomes its alternative version.

But Only Lovers Left Alive is above all an extraordinary aesthetic feast. The visual layer expresses more than the words spoken by the characters. From the very beginning, through Adam and Eve’s general appearance — the colors of the clothes they wear, their hairstyles — we can assess their attitude toward the world as well as their psychological state. The soundtrack, plunging into the darkest recesses of Adam’s senseless existence, the colors of Tangier, and the image of Detroit’s stagnation — the city of industrial decline and American musical talent — affect all of the viewer’s senses.

Jozef Van Wissem working with Jarmusch, the band SQÜRL (of which the director is a member), and the unforgettable Yasmine Hamdan create not only an incredible soundtrack that completes the vampires’ cinematic world, but also, through their sounds, bring the viewer into a state of musical intoxication that is difficult to shake off for several days after the screening.

The tale Jarmusch serves matures in the viewer’s consciousness at an unhurried pace, resembling the slow manner of cinematic narration — which is, after all, a reflection of the internal world of the protagonists, vampires who celebrate every moment of existence, savor the world and nature, untouched by the rush of everyday life, and above all intoxicated by the love that binds them. For what does time become in the face of immortality?

Jarmusch’s work must be contemplated, savored slowly, without expecting immediate sensations. And the visual layer is not, as one might think, a pretty smokescreen distracting from empty content. The images presented produce an effect of insatiability that grows with every new frame soaked in aesthetic intoxication — we wither along with the vampire characters who seek fresh, untainted blood and the experiences this increasingly scarce substance provides.

What Jarmusch presents induces a sensual high; it is like the good stuff consumed by Adam and Eve, and although we know it will stop working soon, we still want more and more.