Only Lovers Left Alive

Independent avant-garde film maker Jim Jarmusch has created an unusually intoxicating film experience that’s a philosophical meditation and a vampire family drama which plays at times like a dramatic version of The Adams Family and also like a moody art film. 

An 18^th century immortal vampire couple, Adam and Eve, are trying to live a reclusive, private and somewhat stable life while working on and enjoying their artistic passions in our contemporary world. 

A kind of In the Mood for Love with Vampires, this is a contemplative and dreamy film about how the living past has disappeared into obscurity and mystery. Like Wong Kar wai’s film In the Mood for Love (2000), Only Lovers is a dark mood piece about nocturnal drifters passing through empty abandoned places that were once great and beautiful.

Adam is a musician from the 18^th century who, never growing old, has evolved along with the times and now collects vintage guitars and lives in a boarded up old house in an abandoned part of Detroit, clandestinely influencing the underground music scene. 

The movie shows us a vampire’s eye view of the world. We never see daylight and Adam and Eve are always on the prowl for fresh blood supplies. They have loads of cash and are able to find the blood they need to sustain their existence by secretly purchasing donated blood from hospitals and doctors.

There is a circular theme of eternal life and life cycles. Having acquired ancient knowledge over the hundreds of years that they’ve lived, they are very much attached to the past and still revere the ancient traditions and technologies, tinkering and mixing them with newer gadgets to create strange but functional hybrids to serve their own purposes.

Eve is a reader and lover of poetry and philosophy living in an apartment in Tangiers, Morocco, which is where English Elizabethan era playwright and dramatist Christopher Marlow also lives. The movie uses the conceit that it was Marlowe who was the real talent behind the famous plays credited to William Shakespeare. 

When Eve senses Adam’s suicidal depression, she quickly books a flight to Detroit to be with him, and their age old love and respect for each other is immediately apparent. Going out for evening drives, they reminiscing about the past and the human ‘zombies’ they once knew.

The lovers have their own unique counter culture style and the interesting thing is that we get to see our world through the eyes of people who have lived in it longer than anyone alive today. People who have experienced human history as no one else could and still retain some of its ancient traditions and knowledge that has been lost to us. 

It begs the question: What would our ancestors, were they still alive, make of this world we are now living in that they helped to create? It’s an interesting question that this movie touches on.

Visually, the film is artfully and poetically realized through authentic eerie location photography in the narrow nighttime alley ways of Tangiers and the vast empty urban streets and abandoned parking lots of Detroit. The film feels so random and truthful that one never doubts the reality of the places and situations.

Seven years in the making, this rare film is one of the most satisfying I’ve ever seen and kept me totally immersed in its strange reality. Tilda Swinton as Eve and Tom Hiddleston as Adam are perfectly cast and are mesmerizing as the long lived night dwellers obsessed with art, music and love.

Only Lovers Left Alive is sure to become a cult favorite with fans of the vampire genre and of Jarmusch’s genre bending films.

JP

Godzilla

The new Godzilla movie takes the iconic amphibious monster hero back to its Japanese roots, rising up from the depths just when humanity needs him most.

During the 1950s atomic age government nuclear testing in the Pacific, a massive ancient creature lying dormant on the ocean floor is awakened.

Unlike Cloverfield (2008) or The Host (2006), there seems to be a lack of any visual style except in the monster sequences, in fact parts of the film look downright low budget. The human story in particular looks almost like a 50s TV show with bad lighting and fake sets standing in for Japan. 

The best visuals are saved for the creature sequences. It seems most of the budget was spent on the creature effects and it shows. Gareth Edwards' excellent previous film Monsters (2010) was visually more impressive and realistic while dealing with the human story much better using wonderfully natural performances.

When a pair of M.U.T.O.s, (massive unidentified terrestrial organism), prehistoric parasites that can also fly and feed off nuclear energy start mating, using San Francisco and Las Vegas as a breeding ground, Godzilla responds to the threat that we humans are ill prepared to deal with.

Unlike other American disaster films where we follow multiple story lines and characters from differing back grounds and social status, this Godzilla film focuses on one middle class family keeping the story simple enough to follow, but if that story and its characters fails to keep one’s attention it could be disastrous. 

The first half of this film flirts dangerously close with uninteresting and clichéd characters in predictable situations mined from previous iterations of the monster disaster genre like Jurassic Park (1993), War of the Worlds (2005), Godzilla (1998), and Pacific Rim (2013).

It isn’t until the last hour of the film that Godzilla comes alive with a fascinating collage of classic hero shots when Godzilla literally steps into the frame like a lone gun slinger coming to mankind’s rescue with a King Kong like determination that hints at a higher intelligence and purpose.

This year being the 60^th anniversary of the franchise, this Legendary/Warner Bros. reboot of Godzilla is a bit of a homage to the original 1954 Japanese film Gojira that started it all, including the monster’s look and behavior. 

The original was a symbol of post atomic age fears and Godzilla has been resurrected here and can now be seen to serve a post 9/11 age of similar fears. There is a sequence in the film that harkens back to the search and rescue of survivors from the rubble of collapsed buildings by fire fighters working together with civilians.

But the film also plays on global environmental fears of our destructive influence on the planet with the increase in global warming and Tsunamis wiping out coastal cities around the world.

This new bad ass Godzilla is more than just a destructive force, he has a personality and seems to exude a melancholic sadness from carrying the weight of the world on its shoulders. Like an aging tired gunfighter who is forced out of retirement to settle one more conflict, but it certainly won’t be the last.

Godzilla is a great introduction into the genre for a younger audience and if you’re an older fan of, and are familiar with the Japanese Godzilla films and creature disaster genre in general, this film will not disappoint. Enjoy the apocalyptic city smashing mayhem.

JP