Although Spielberg has made beautiful, artistic pictures as good as any, he had an instinct for what the big public would want. Whereas Jarmusch, he makes these little art films, and they don’t make a ton of money, but they’re also very beautiful. (Coppola 56)
In a 2018 interview with Time magazine, Francis Ford Coppola makes an astute distinction between two directors—off-Hollywood directors and Hollywood directors. Through this, he implicitly bemoans the commodification of art—its threats to taking risks amid the creative process. Jim Jarmusch’s vampire film Only Lovers Left Aliveexemplifies the “uncontaminated” art that he hopes for. This is allegorically explored through his main character, Adam (Tom Hiddleston) who is also Jarmusch’s alter ego. Adam is a melancholic musician whose sentiments for genuine art are metaphorically echoed through the plight of a vampire. He hungers for the pristine blood of the living for sustenance. The hunger is also a metaphor for the pursuit of the forgotten time where the creation of art is genuine, personal and untouched by mainstream demands and corporate control. Such an approach to art lends itself to a greater appreciation and a higher aesthetic value. Therefore, Only Lovers Left Aliveexploits the vampire mythology to comment on the hardships of artistic endeavors. This is especially depicted through Adam’s existential displacement, as his vampiric “immortality” leads him into a new millennia where commodity takes precedence over creative risks—all of which becomes an allegorical representation of defeated artists (such as Jarmusch himself) whose artistic inspiration is constantly halted or threatened by the demands for profit. In essence, Jarmusch recreates the vampire mythology to bolster his lament for the arduous plight of the self-preserving auteur.
Adam is a brooding reclusive vampire preoccupied with an intense alienation from the new millennia after having lived through centuries where he has befriended exceptional literary contemporaries of his time such as Lord Byron, John Keats, Oscar Wilde, Billie Holiday, Franz Kafka, and Edgar Allan Poe. Their portraits adorn the walls of his almost dilapidated Victorian home in Detroit. He is reminiscent of Poe’s isolated Roderick Usher who wallows in his own familiar history and, therefore, too ill (especially on an emotional level) to leave his manor. Along with portraits of writers from centuries ago, Adam’s home is cluttered with electronics such as old amplifiers, entangled electrical wiring, turntables, box televisions, classic guitars, which he avidly collects from his one and only friend, Ian (Anton Yelchin), whom he considers “all right” to his standards of mortals or zombies as Adam calls them. For Adam, art has no real merit in the new millennia. He is disdainful of zombies. Simplistic in thinking, they are easily acculturated in a world of corporate control over pop culture “art”—whether it is music, films, literature. Most of all, the new millennia is devoid of creativity because, according to Adam, zombies suffer from a “fear of their fucking imagination.” Because of this, they are incapable of discerning true art and are eagerly willing to go with the taste of the ubiquitous mainstream.
Adam’s ailment stems from the very nature of his vampirism. A vampire’s immortality can be disheartening and filled with despair, since there is a perpetual, reflective longing for what no longer exists. To live forever has its drawbacks. The cultivated old replaced by the superficial and the unsophisticated new is considered a tragic disappointment for Adam. Jarmusch, like Adam, “appears engaged in a reevaluation of experimental culture in an era of increased corporate control over the public channels of expression” (Suárez 3). Such reevaluation consists of resisting zombie urges and holding on to what is genuine and not what easily sells in the industry. Adam finds solace in his passion for music in which he calls “funeral music.” He refuses to let it fall in the hands of the philistine zombies soiling it with pop culture unimaginativeness, which will eventually be treated like the latest fad and discarded until something new comes along. But Adam’s protection over his creation can only go so far. In a milieu with social media, You Tube, and the Internet, the avant-garde can easily be disseminated. Moreover, Ian forewarns him about the irony about his reclusiveness, which has inevitably fostered Adam and his music as subjects of intense curiosity from his fans—a dilemma that Adam considers a drag. Eva, Adam’s sister-in-law, has claimed that she has heard his music in Los Angeles, also known as “zombie central” according to Adam. He becomes horrified by its unexpected fame. Adam has a disdain for popularity and recognition. For instance, when Adam and Eve are moved when they witnessed a female Moroccan singer sing while they were in Tangiers, Eve tells Adam “I’m sure she’ll be very famous.” He replies: “God, I hope not. She’s way too good for that.” When he hears his own music at an underground club, Adam sees it as an assault on his existence. Jarmusch can also attest to this. He rebukes the label independent in which he deems a meaningless classification. He is afraid of being branded by the media as an independent director, which is the equivalent to a marketing ploy, and nothing about the authenticity of the work. He calls it “a load of shit. It’s just another brand slapped on something to market it. It’s like alternative music. It means nothing now. It’s used to make alternative music commercial, you know, mainstream” (Andrews 174). Jarmusch refuses to place himself within a niche that makes it difficult for him to free himself from it. As a filmmaker, freedom is important. And fame stifles such a freedom.
The protection over artistic property also coincides with Jarmusch’s directorial predicament. He refers to himself as “an estranged American” since most of his funding for his films comes from Japan and Europe (Suárez 2). He states “I’m really stubborn and I started out with an attitude that I was going to make films the way I and those people chose to collaborate with want to make them and I’ve just stuck to that. I’m not seduced by money or things that Hollywood tries to offer you, and in exchange you have to make the film the way some businessmen tell you to” (193). Because of this, Jarmusch refuses to compromise his work by allowing himself to be indebted to Hollywood. In his early days of filmmaking, he was forewarned by his mentor, director Nicholas Ray, to “never set foot in Hollywood; otherwise, his future as a director would be completely and irreversibly ruined” (Piazza 67).
However, stubbornness also has its drawbacks. It took Jarmusch seven years for the film industry to release Only Lovers Left Alivedue to financing. Jarmusch always believed that the best part of filmmaking is the ability to discover the undiscovered and to create something that is completely against the norm rather than trying to fit in a particular category. Only Lovers Left Alive lends itself to an “in-between worldliness” when it comes to creating a film narrative that is intertextual and that intersects multiple genres through subversions, homages, and irony. There is no absolute way to classify Only Lovers LeftAlive—especially when it comes to genre classification. It is a comedy especially in its satire on vampire tropes, it is a horror film because of its imagery of blood and death, and it is a romance in its depiction of eternal love. Jarmusch’s mythology of the vampire tale is not only a sensual and romantic ode glorifying classicism or the humanities’ past—whether it is through music, architecture, art, and literature—but it is also the complementary intertwining of the old and the new, especially within the context of the vampire genre and Jarmusch’s unique reinterpretation of it. Because of this, he is somewhat dismayed about the film industry’s apprehensiveness in taking chances with experimental films. In an Indiewire interview, Jarmusch mentions“It gets more and more difficult for films that are maybe a little unusual or maybe not predictable or not satisfying people’s expectations of something—which is the beauty of cinema” (Perez). He was disappointed that no one wanted to take a chance in a vampire film that will not follow the clichés—especially in the wake of the franchise blockbuster such as Twilight—which ultimately became a run-of-the-mill vampire film, particularly after the release of its 2008 original that was directed by a woman, Catherine Harwicke, who actually took a chance in unknown actors. The film made an impressive gross ($396 million) in 2008 (Dixon 205). Although not an arthouse horror film to begin with, the subsequent films eventually became a victim of commodification. For instance, the second film released a year later (The Twilight Saga: The New Moon) was hurried because the producers were greedy for another blockbuster hit. In spite of Harwicke’s request to work on the script that she initially felt apprehensive about, she was ultimately dropped as the director and was replaced by a male director, Chris Weitz. According to Dixon, author of The History of Horror,the film became “more formulaic” and “only time will tell whether this was a wise decision” (206).
As for Jarmusch, the seven-year wait for Only Lovers Left Alivespared him from the film’s artistic ruin. Coppola makes a disturbing prediction in regards to how big companies such as Amazon and Apple whose financial clout will eventually lead them to own the film industry. Consequently, the need for profit has threatened artistic inspiration. For instance, Coppola asserts: “The trouble is that they’re using their algorithms to categorize” and “you cannot make art without risk” because “risk is a necessary element to making art” (56). Moreover, Jarmusch is not the only director who laments about directorial freedom to create and to take risks. The late Sydney Lumet 1996 memoir Making Movies mentions how finances can make it difficult for directors to make films. Back in 1995, “the average cost of a movie is 25 million and still rising” (Lumet 213). He talks about the industry’s stunted evolution. According to him, “The MGM logo, famous for its roaring lion, also bears the motto Ars Gratia Artis (“Art for Art’s Sake”). “The irony of this is now doubled,” since “art had to make money” (Lumet 216). Lumet, being a renowned studio auteur known for his social realism in his films, joins Jarmusch in the same artistic frustration. Amid the burgeoning blockbuster era that has posed as a threat to Lumet during his days as a filmmaker, artistic challenges continue to loom, regardless of working outside the studios or within the studios.
And such obsession with artistic integrity and self-preservation are also depicted in Jarmusch’s misanthropic characters. After all, his films are “largely about displacement, cross-cultural communication, and exile” (Suárez). For instance, Adam is a brooding misanthrope who lives in solitude and creates funeral music—as he calls it—because of his contempt for zombies and his early influences of the sentimental English romantics such as Byron and Keats. His only connection with the living is through his zombie friend, Ian, and Dr. Watson (Jeffrey Wright) who gives him his preferred O negative blood supply from the hospital he works in. Adam feels a sense of defeatism amid his displaced existence, especially in a rundown Detroit in which he blames the zombies for turning it into a wasteland. Detroit now consists of remains of decrepit buildings that once thrived with exuberance. The timeworn, frayed architecture is still etched with intricate moldings. Jarmusch captures rundown and defunct theaters that were once bustling with energy in their heyday through his nocturnal pan shots—a brooding cinematic poeticism. Because of Adam’s contempt for pop culture and the living, Adam has elevated himself in a greater cultural elitism. Only Eve, his lover whom he adores, can join him in his life of artistic, philosophical, and intellectual aristocracy. Unlike Adam, she is more resilient mainly because she is older and wiser. She is not too affected by the zombies and how they treat the world. Eve learns to cope through her love of literature, nature, music, and life itself. She also relishes in her capability of figuring out the age of an antique just by touching it. At Adam’s behest, Eve leaves Tangiers where she currently resides to help her ailing lover who feels as if “all the sand is at the bottom of the hour glass.” By simply turning the glass in the other direction will not cure his melancholia. Instead, she needs to be there for him to alleviate his painful estrangement from the new world.
Although Jarmusch has never seen or read about the young romance depicted in the Twilight adaptations, Jarmusch is able to portray a vampire love that is more transcendent—almost enviable. It is not simply about a young love between a human and preternatural as in Twilight. It is a complementary companionship where Adam and Eve find solace in each other, especially in their passion for the humanities. Only Eve can convince him to seize life’s beauty (whatever is left of it). This is clearly the case when she discovers a wooden bullet in his home. (Through this, Jarmusch plays with the vampire clichés by adding a modern twist in their methods of pain or destruction. For instance, vampires can suffer and/or die through prolonged sun exposure, blood malnourishment, a wooden stake through the heart, the singed of holy water, or the sight of a cross.) Discovering her lover’s consideration for suicide motivates her to convince him what life still has to offer. For instance, she admonishes him: “How can you’ve lived so long and still not get it? This self-obsession is a waste of living. It could be spent in surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, and dancing.” Eve offers him a dance to Denise DeSalle classic soul “Struck by a Thing Called Love.” The dance between Adam and Eve—a common motif in Jarmuch’s films—is also seen in Down by Law between Roberto Bernigni and Nicoletta Braschi. Jarmucsh’s mingles a little bit of soul, adding another thread to Jarmusch’s music tapestry. Like Jarmusch’s alter ego, music is expressively significant and powerful. Because Jarmusch is a musician himself, the film’s score complements the theme of nostalgic melancholia, artistic preservation, and momentary escapism. It also consists of a diverse medley of genres and cultures such as music from his band Sqürl, rock ‘n’ roll, a resounding melancholic drone, a brooding violin solo Adam plays briefly, classic soul, and Morrocan influences—all of which become part of the film’s lexicon. Therefore, “sound is never reduced to mere background comment, but becomes an ‘open, multiple, dispersed’ area of linguistic production in its own right . . . an area in which the music may assume the role of interlocutor with whom to converse” (Piazza 17). Thus, when Eve gets up to dance to DeSalle’s song, it is an extended plea for Adam to continue to relish in life. When Adam joins her in the dance, he momentarily escapes from his melancholic stupor.
Because of Adam and Eve’s aged existence that span centuries, Jarmusch does not shy away from making his characters figures similar to classical paintings. In the Only Lovers Left Alive documentary by Léa Rinaldi, Jarmusch compares the stylized lighting on Ian’s bloodless, fresh corpse slumped on the couch amid the break of break of dawn to a Montegna painting. Jarmusch’s cinematography is complemented by bold imagery and dusky atmosphere with a blend of rich colors, reminiscent of classical art. Along with this, Jarmusch relishes in a voguish portrayal of vampires of Adam whose shoulder length wavy tresses add a curious enigma to his forlorn face. Adam also lounges around wearing a centuries old velvet robe that is partially wrapped around him, thereby, exposing his marbled, well-sculpted chest, resembling a Greek statue. Critic Amy Taubin from Film Comment perfectly describes Adam as a “Pre-Raphaelite aesthete.”He is painfully handsome. Eve is just as ghoulishly beautiful. She is slender with a snowy pallor that complements her platinum mane. Both are beautifully striking and gloriously antiquated—they are paintings themselves, replicating subjects in the works of pre-Raphaelites and Greek statues. During the 1860s Pre-Raphaelism, “the emphasis shift[s] away from issues of sexual morality and toward an exploration of the erotic in terms of the physical beauty of the human figure” (Prettejohn 218). This also lends itself to what was called “third person dramas” where “the depicted characters were replaced by intense psychological or erotic engagement between the depicted figure and the viewer” (Prettejohn 218). Witnessing the clandestine sensuality amongst lovers transcends spectatorship. Jarmusch takes this even further with his aerial shot of the two lovers naked in bed. In this case, he eloquently mixes classicism and cinematic modernity. This is exemplified in a high angle shot of Adam and Eve’s sculpted bodies facing together as they peacefully sleep on their sides. Jarmusch’s lavish portrayal of vampire sensuality transcends the mythology—the lingering static shot emulates a painting adored and admired by the spectator.
Along with their physical beauty, Jarmusch’s places Adam and Eve on an elevated plane—almost god-like amid their elitism—and not just in vampire world but also above everything else, including humans and the spiritual world. (According to Eve, God is a myth). Through this, Jarmusch delights in other intangibles such as the humanities and the undying love between Adam and Eve who are made for each other. Their love is somewhat tragic and beautiful—as they are immortals with nostalgic souls—who rapturously find solace with one another. Because of this, they are the only lovers left “alive” to relish and reminisce about their long gone friends Byron, Keats, and Shelly. Adam and Eve’s refined existence do not come from well-bred ancestral titles (as in Count Dracula) or royal aristocracy via bloodlines. Rather, it is their centuries-ripened existence—and their cultivation contrasts with the dominant culture. Love and antiquation are complementary forces melded together. Therefore, passion in a Jarmuschian vampire film is depicted through the undying love between Adam and Eve and their shared experiences that go back centuries. By tradition, vampire films are erotic and passionate. Jarmusch borrows from the classical sensuality of the vampire genre from its leading pioneers, that is, John Polidori’s The Vampyre: A Tale, which portrays “an aristocratic vampire as a figure of heterosexual erotic desire” (Dixon 2). The first bite of a nocturnal, mysterious, debonair aristocrat (usually addressed with the title Count) is both painful but also very sensual. For instance, “a vampire’s hypnotic abilities cater perfectly to the strong sexual aspect of vampirism. Biting someone is a very intimate act, and compounded by the removal of blood in a comingling of fluids it is reminiscent of the sexual act itself” (Karg, Spaite, and Sutherland 83). On the contrary, Adam and Eve’s seduction is reserved only for each other. This cements their undying exclusivity, loyalty, and fidelity. According to vampire folklore, mythology,and literature, vampires are considered to be the undead whose purpose is to be in servitude of evil. But what makes Adam and Eve unique in their vampirism is that they exhibit predatory restraint. Jarmusch ironically makes them “good” vampires who refuse to prey on the living. They reluctantly pass up opportunities of human blood when they see innocent mortals with bleeding injuries—whether it is from a physical trauma or by simply opening a can of juice. Typifying the bourgeoisie amongst vampires, they refuse to drink contaminated blood; they want only the “good stuff”—which they get from their most trusted suppliers (i.e., poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe or Dr. Wright)—and not harvested from injuries inflicted on the living. For humans, it is the equivalent to consuming organic and non-GMO foods for sustenance. Their avoidance of blood contamination reinforces their exclusivity and their pristine existence, that is, they are too good to feast on the “bad stuff.”
On the other hand, Eve’s younger sister Ava—a Los Angelino philistine vampire whose youth makes her inexperienced and uncultivated unlike her older sister and brother-in-law—ends up drinking Adam’s only mortal friend, Ian, merely because she could not resist his cuteness. She has forgone the option of turning him into a vampire instead. Unlike Adam and Eve, Ava demonstrates a lack of self-control and ends up draining Ian’s blood. “The act of consuming blood is for the vampire a matter of restraint, as the action generally triggers sexual arousal and a frenzy that if not carefully controlled usually kills the victim” (Karg, Spaite, and Sutherland 77). In Ava’s case, her licentiousness makes her physically sick as if she has contracted a venereal disease. Eve admonishes her by telling her “what do you expect? He is from the fucking music industry?” In the 21stcentury music industry, contaminated blood is ubiquitous. Therefore, a lusty vampire cannot afford to be indiscriminant—and only a discerning and responsible vampire will abide by careful nourishment in order to preserve one’s existence. Ava—untamed in her predatory and carnal urges—has threatened Adam and Eve’s seclusion and anonymity as vampires, as Ian’s murder will be traced back to them. As a result, Adam has reached a threshold (even though he has always begrudged her for another transgression she has committed 87 years ago). He decides to banish her from his home and tells her to “go back and rot in LA.” Upset, she calls both Adam and Eve condescending snobs—which is to a certain degree true.
When Adam and Eve flee to Tangiers in order to avoid being accused of Ian’s murder, their arrival to the destination puts their lives in peril even more so, as Christopher Marlowe, Eve’s supplier of the “good stuff,” is dying from drinking a lethal dose of contaminated blood. Consequently, they are faced with the desperate decision to turn a young couple in Tangiers into vampires, as they watch them passionately kiss. They are, after all, considered a “safe” feast, that is, not from the music industry, not reckless philistines or zombies, and definitely not from Los Angeles. Adam wryly tells Eve that it is a romantic decision to turn the young couple—since the young couple will perpetually be young and in love. And “in literary and cinematic traditions, the ever-present aspect of vampirism as a twisted fountain of youth is often employed by vampires in an effort to assure their victims that immortality is a gift rather than a curse” (Karg, Spaite, and Sutherland 82). The “gift” of immortality allows for more vampire couples to exist—but with a biting irony—as the romance itself has it sacrifices, that is, the end to the young lovers’ human mortality. And such sacrifice is a metaphor for Jarmush’s plight as a director. Jarmusch truly believes in the idealistic romance of making a film with uncorrupt vision along with the stroke of a genuine artist. Through this, he must endure and anticipate the hardships and uncertainty of when he is granted the next “bite” of “the good stuff” in order to maintain the integrity of his auteuristic existence. For seven years he has fancied the idea of making a vampire film love story—and it took him seven years for the romance to be resurrected without Hollywood’s contamination.
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August 15, 2018
This essay is dedicated to the class of 2018 whose polarizing applause after the screening of Jarmusch’s work needed additional encouragement for a deeper reflection on Jarmusch’s unhurried, meaningful, and relevant narrative on the state of art though the vampire mythology.
Works Cited
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