Leave it to Jim Jarmusch, the director who gave film audiences the "psychedelic western," 1995's "Dead Man," and the gangster/samurai hybrid, "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai," to find a way to put his own unique stamp on that most trendy of cinematic monsters: the vampire. In "Only Lovers Left Alive," Jarmusch finds a way to shake off the recently accumulated residue of too many sparkly, lovesick bloodsuckers by recontextualizing the supernatural creatures as the ultimate hipsters. More than just a killer joke, it's a conceit of undeniable logic — after all, when you've been alive for centuries, you've liked just about everything before it was cool.
Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton play Adam and Eve, a vampire couple who've been married for centuries, but are currently living apart. Adam is living a reclusive life holed up in an abandoned mansion on the outskirts of Detroit, while Eve is in Tangiers hanging out with famed playwright Christopher …show more content…
They often refer to humanity as "zombies," with the implication being that our species are the ones sleepwalking our way through our lives, oblivious to the mess we're making of things. It's evident to the vampires that the wonders of the world are wasted on us. We've ruined our bodies and our environment so much that they can't even feed on us anymore. Adam pays a doctor (Jeffrey Wright, in a small but memorable role) at a nearby hospital to provide him with a steady supply of blood, though that seems as much about avoiding the bother of dealing with the logistics of cleanup after a feeding as it is about our contaminated blood. But the idea that humans are the ones who are a danger to the vampires is an idea that effectively generates a surprising sympathy for the predators, making them the vulnerable
Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton play Adam and Eve, a vampire couple who've been married for centuries, but are currently living apart. Adam is living a reclusive life holed up in an abandoned mansion on the outskirts of Detroit, while Eve is in Tangiers hanging out with famed playwright Christopher …show more content…
They often refer to humanity as "zombies," with the implication being that our species are the ones sleepwalking our way through our lives, oblivious to the mess we're making of things. It's evident to the vampires that the wonders of the world are wasted on us. We've ruined our bodies and our environment so much that they can't even feed on us anymore. Adam pays a doctor (Jeffrey Wright, in a small but memorable role) at a nearby hospital to provide him with a steady supply of blood, though that seems as much about avoiding the bother of dealing with the logistics of cleanup after a feeding as it is about our contaminated blood. But the idea that humans are the ones who are a danger to the vampires is an idea that effectively generates a surprising sympathy for the predators, making them the vulnerable