Al's Omniflick: Only Lovers Left Alive

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Only Lovers Left Alive

**Spoiler Alert**

Directed by Jim Jarmusch, Starring: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, John Hurt and Mia Wasikowska

Jim Jarmusch's vampire film is stylish, moody, atmospheric and anything but horrorifying or thrilling but it is terrifically cast and acted. It's also other than something Bela Lugosi or Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart might have found themselves in.

Jarmusch in never one to slavishly cling to genre conventions, like his western Dead Man or martial arts film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. His are more contemplative, cerebral affairs and so it is again in Only Lovers Left Alive.

We find ourselves in two settings: the labyrinthine medina of Tangier and a room awash in instruments in a shabby room in a shabbier building in Detroit. A vampiress named Eve (Tilda Swinton) lives in a room hidden from the world in the medina while her vampire husband Adam (Tom Hiddleston) lives hermetically in said room in the Motor City.

The two live their days (nights really) trying to stay supplied with healthy blood, which grows increasingly difficult to find in this world of tainted hemoglobin. While Eve relies on a fellow vampire Marlowe (John Hurt) for her precious supply, Adam visits a hospital to pay off a doctor named Watson (small role for Jeffrey Wright) for his. From conversation between the vampires, we learn each has been alive for centuries. Adam is an accomplished musician who once provided Schubert with music the famous composer claimed as his creation. Marlowe is actually the Christopher Marlowe; once Shakespeare's rival and in the film, tha acknowledged author of the Immortal Bard's great plays. Adam still records music though his current instruments of choice are mostly relegated to electric guitars and drums. While Marlowe still writes and Adam composes, its never clear what Eve's pursues in her spare time.

Jarmusch's film isn't plot-driven; it relies heavily on mood and the characters' backstories to create what little drama and tension are sprinkled among scenes of vampire angst and dark, ill-lit interiors. Only Lovers Left Alive still manages to be watchable. Tilda Swinton's unique, not-of-this-world looks and Tom Hiddleston's broody impatience with what the vampires call the "zombie world;" the human species, keep us watching when the film's temperature seems to be set at almost absolute zero.

After Eve flies (on an airline, not on bat-wings) to Detroit to be with Adam, her sister Ava comes to stay and in doing so, inadvertantly kills Adam's friend Ian (Anton Yelchin) after a night of clubbing. His death forces Adam and Eve to flee Detroit for the safer, more remote environs of Tangier, only to find Marlowe dying, which threatens their supply of life-giving blood. The loss of Marlowe brings about soul-searching and the unavoidable but crucial hunt for blood via the direct source; in this case; two lovers out at night for a stroll.

The vampire culture presented in Jarmusch's film is nothing new; immortality, historic contributions to art, existential doubt, etc, but he brings his brand of humor to the proceedings, and characters who seem more like artists than vampires. He also makes subtle, political statements about man's physical self-contamination and in setting half the story in Detroit, manages to comment on the decay of American cities brought on by real blood-suckers: corporate America and the depredations it has visited on workers and families as the population of a once-thriving factory town dwindles.

Only Lovers Left Alive isn't an ambitious film, but it has the offbeat stamp of an unpredictable auteur; one that manages to show us something that doesn't have product tie-ins or needless, gimmicky 2D and 3D options. We can always count on Jarmusch to lead us off and away from the assembly-line cinema of Hollywood. I'm sure he intends to keep it that way.

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On DVD

Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang

Though we might normally think of the films M and Metropolis when director Fritz Lang becomes the topic of conversation, less known is the legendary director's work in Hollywood. Having fled the ever-growing menace of Nazi Germany for America in the early 1930s', Lang eventually found himself under contract for MGM.

Though his work in Hollywood is very uneven, one standout is Fury, from 1936. Starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney, the film's condemnation of mob justice seems spectacularly daring now, considering lynching was still a reality in Depression-era America. We don't see one black person in the film entire but we know precisely for whom Lang film is sympathetic.

Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, who is arrested in a small town while en route to meet his fiance, Katherine (Sylvia Sydney). Suspected of being part of a kidnapping of a little girl, Wilson is arrested on the flimsiest evidence. While he sits in cell; angry and indignant, Katherine is puzzled as to why her fiance hasn't arrived at their prearranged meeting place.

But Wilson's fortunes take a darker and more dangerous turn when a mob--already on edge--is roused to anger. Egging one another on, the mob moves on the jailhouse where Wilson is being held. As the angry gathering becomes a mass, drawing citizens of the town into their swelling numbers, a lynch-mob begins to form. The sheriff, determined to see due process take its course, refuses their forceful demands. Becoming angrier and angrier and bolder and bolder, the crowd storms the jail, overwhelming the sheriff and his deputies. Unable to unlock the cell doors to reach Wilson, the mob sets the jailhouse ablaze as an alternate method of lynching.

Katherine, having arrived on the scene, faints when she sees flames engulf the cell where her fiance is held.

In spite of the mob acting as a faceless entity, its principle members are brought to trial though the town and the defendants maintain a conspiracy of silence, hoping to escape convictions and censure.

A sure acquittal seems imminent until damning evidence assures their guilt. When the majority of the members receive death sentences, Wilson turns up at his brothers, having survived the fire. Knowing the public is unaware of his survival, he vows to stay in hiding to ensure the mob conspirators are executed.

The scene where Katherine, nearly insane from grief, comes face to face with Joe is a powerful moment in the film. As she slowly recovers from her state, she realizes Joe's vindictive determination to see the mob hang is in itself a great injustice.

The story climaxes during a stirring courtroom scene that brings the fascinating story to a close.

I would have never expected Hollywood to make a statement as powerful as Fury made in 1936. Given the fact that lynchings in America at the time went unpunished, the movie railed bravely, in spite of the main character being white rather than black, against what was then the status quo. The Oxbow Incident would make a similar and commensurately powerful statement seven years later.

The film's willingness to peer into the darker side of American life could be partly attributed to Lang, who co-wrote the story and who was no stranger to exploring the darker side of humanity. Having seen evil flower in his home country, it makes sense Lang would choose to tell this story.

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney give wonderful, emotionally layered performances. Katherine's near descent into madness is depicted touchingly by Sydney. To see Tracy's mild-mannered Wilson become angry and vengeful is heartbreaking.

Even watching Lang's film on a small screen does little to diminish its power. Weeks after the viewing, I still can't shake its indelible images or its angry indictment of one of America's great crimes. One couldn't devise a better title than one it was given eighty years ago. Fury indeed.