Film Review: Only Lovers Left Alive.

First aired at the Cannes on 25th May 2013, and released in UK on 21st February 2014.
Staring, Tom Hiddleston, Tilda Swinton, Mia Wasikowska, Anton Yelchin, Jeffrey Wright, Slimane Dazi, and John Hurt.
Writen and directed by Jim Jarmusch

And music by Jozef van Wissem.

This has defiantly become one of my favourite  films for sure, and one of my favourite vampire films.

I have been a fan of Tilda Swinton for a long time. (The white witch of Narnia was lovely and enchanting and the twisted angle Gabrielle in Constantine).

What I love about this film is that it is not like any other vampire story. It dose not have the Dracula influence of lost love and vampire hunters. Its just to true lovers that neither time nor distance can come between them.

This film shows a different state of of vampire life. They don't kill to eat, hey pay doctors at blood banks to quench their thirst. they appreciate everything, art music nature, architecture, the world.

Eve (played by Tilda Swinton) travels for Tangier to Detroit to see her husband Adam (Played by Tom Hiddleston). You see her packing for her flight. Two pieces of hand luggage in each case she is only packing books. You see her choosing from a vast collection through her home, smiling as she looks through each of them, creasing each ageing page that she opens, admiring it. She is the optimist.
Adam’s passion is music an science. Creating his own music, building his own generator, and a web cam out of old dis-used technology. He has a goring collection of string instruments with a knowledge of the history of each. He is the pessimistic one un trusting of even his own wife at times.
John Hurts character Kit or Christopher Marrlow describes Adam as “suidicial romantic scoundrel”
The first time that you see Adam and Eve on screen together there is a reserved want and passion between them.
They refer to the human race as zombies. In a way you could say hat we are compared to these characters. Walking through life regretting, un-realising anything and everything.

When Eve’s sister Ava (played by Mia Wasikowska) turns up you see a completely different energy in her. while Adam and Eve are these reserved couple Ava is almost a rebelling teenage party rebel (even though she is hundreds of years old. After she kills Ian, Adams assistant, and destroying some of his she is thrown out and Adam and Eve are left to make a quick exit form Detroit to Tangier. The sadness of Adam when he has to leave all his instruments behind is almost heart breaking. The way that Eve looks after him is mothering almost.
When they reach Tangier they go to Kit for blood to find that he is dying and that they are now left alone and no way to get blood. they have to result to killing a young couple.

Adam and Eve’s age is never mentioned, apart form they have lived though the middle ages the french inquisition, the why that Adam speaks it is believed that they knew Pythagoras, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, and Tesla. Eve, when looking a photo of the two of them, she says that it was their third wedding. Every thing suggesting that they are as old as time and that they where the first.
The idea of a vampire can not enter unless invited to them is but a superstition of bad luck, along with garlic. (holy water and crosses are not mentioned but I assume that these are the same), And as for day light, they sleep during the day and travel only at night, keeping with the traditional night dwelling creatures.

It may be another vampire love store but this one, to me is not a teenage vampire film, even though it might seem it due to Tom Hiddleston playing one the leads, its not. The film is deep, almost dark in some ways. It is depicting a single moment in these two lovers existence. showing their passion for the world and each other. The sound track is almost the kind of music you might listen to while high. The sound track I find amazing, almost hypnotising, and relaxing, its beauty.

Twisted Hearts And Darkened Soles.

With twisted hearts and minds alike.

With darkened soles they stroke the night.

Imperfect lives in perfect bodies

Immortal lives in mortal dreams.

With forgotten unknown pasts, they haunt our dreams

With an unquenchable thirst of the body and mind

for knowledge and beauty, in art and science,

A thirst of the body of rich think pure flowing blood,

A unquenchable thirst for those with twisted hearts and imperfect lives.

The stories of old and new we combined, 

creating the illusion of beauty within fear and darkness.

Stories of eternal romance and passion. 

Hiding the rage and loneliness, with this, unquenchable hunger, and thirst of knowledge and beauty.

They find them selfs with in a world with those with even more a twisted hearts and darkened soles then themselves.

© sarah patel 2015