Only Lovers Left Alive

If art is not what the light reveals, but is the light itself, then what kind of light is Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive? And what is it trained upon?

It is a slow light. It is an episodic light, a problem-solution narrative never breaking out into conflict. Adam is suicidal. Eve tells him to snap out of it. Eva turns up. She is made to leave. There is no more blood. They kill.

I don’t believe their decision to kill is a betrayal of principal. Adam and Eve don’t have principles. They have aesthetics. I don’t feel like it’s a betrayal of aesthetics either — the kill is not ugly enough. The deaths in this film are framed and coloured beautifully.

Then is this light trained upon lives animated by nothing but aesthetic enjoyment of the world? If so, it is not as empty an existence as I have sometimes feared. It’s not a life with any particular momentum, but it is still a life with weight.

There is much disgust with humanity in the film — humanity that refuses to acknowledge its own greatness at the time when it is present. Humanity that has degraded to such an extent that our very blood is contaminated and impure.

That’s what I wonder: whether the charge that Eve and Adam are condescending snobs (which they are) is meant to carry negative weight? Because that’s generally considered to be a negative characteristic, and the film undermines any notion that they have a superior modern sense, but their aesthetic taste and prowess is not undermined, and they are beautiful. Even as monsters they are beautiful. And taken as monsters…I don’t see them as being especially loathsome. Maybe I’ve been suckered by the beauty.

The music in this film is incredible. Wailing. Dark. Moving. It walks away from us into the desert, beneath the darkening sky storm, lusting.

Tilda Swinton is incredible in this movie. The look on her face when Eve sees Adam…the smallest movement speaking to eons of love.

Can’t say this film has much to teach for prose. It is too completely a film, too completely a thing of image and sound.