Only Lovers Left Alive
Apr. 26th, 2014 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicWas so good. So good. Worth the wait since ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
no_detective first posted about it six months ago. (Her February review.)
I'd been wondering if this might be the Anne Rice movie of my dreams that the actual Anne Rice movies didn't achieve, and in a way it was: these beautiful creatures in beautiful clothes drifting through centuries, drinking in art and literature and music and science and technology with blood as more of an afterthought, some of them angsty and others full of endless wonder, traveling to the corners of the globe, living away from and reuniting with their beloveds with a depth and permanence of feeling most of us can only envy. It appeals to all the same desires to become a vampire for the sake of becoming the ultimate aesthete.
In another way, it was like Der Himmel über Berlin/Wings of Desire: a love song and a dirge for a city (in this case, Detroit) at its nadir, complete with long shots of damaged architecture and indie music performances that capture something about the current era, while a pair of benevolent supernatural creatures watches humanity from a remove. Not that it achieved the level of quality of Wings of Desire, but the resemblance was remarkable.
Which is not to imply that Only Lovers wasn't also very much its own movie. The plot summaries don't do it justice. This is the kind of movie I want when I complain that today's mainstream movies don't leave time to think about anything, including all their plot holes or nonsensical...ness. This movie takes its time, because the characters have all the time in the world. (When they talk about a white dwarf that's only 30 light-years away, you realize they could actually visit it on some spacecraft one day without having to worry about intergenerational planning or cryo.) The movie talks about appreciating culture(s) and nature to the fullest. Tilda Swinton's Eve literally stops to smell the Amanita muscaria. It's about different approaches to life and immortality. It's about maintaining a relationship. It's sort of about the recent history of American music. It touches on elitism/privilege and the contamination of our bodies and our planet.
And it's funny, and beautiful, and tense in the last third when the fragility of their survival becomes clear, and full of references to artists throughout the centuries. Although, if I can nitpick for a sec, you'd think that a pair of vampires as old and educated as these two would have more diverse and obscure references and favorites to toss back and forth. Byron I'll take because Tom Hiddleston's Adam follows so much in his image, and Tesla, too, because he's among the favorites of today's hipsters, whom Adam also embodies-slash-laments, and Darwin worked because it made a good joke/point. I just would have liked less well known names in the mix, and more subtlety. Adam putting on a name tag that said "Dr. Faust" was great, but it lost a little something special when another character called it out. The photo/illustration wall in Adam's apartment did a better job. (Oh, ha, and in one corner was the same pic of Neil Young I posted about the other day.) Unless the point was for us to get all the references and therefore empathize even more with the characters for what they love. Or maybe the lesser references are meant to be uncovered on repeat viewing, among the records strewn across Adam's apartment and the books Eve browses while packing her suitcases.
Okay, but also, since Adam is supposed to deeply appreciate science and electrical engineering, it made me cringe when he said to Eve that Einstein's spooky action at a distance isn't a theory because it's proven. Ugh, writers, you should know that in science, a theory is a pretty damn strong case, and you can't prove something, only disprove it.
Also also, apparently in this universe, vampirism bestows not only fangs (great makeup job there), pale skin and luminous eyes but also very dry hair.
In sum, highly recommended even when it's a bit ridiculous, & want to see again.
ETA: And here is a perfectly valid dissenting opinion fromdaasgrrl!
no_detective first posted about it six months ago. (Her February review.)I'd been wondering if this might be the Anne Rice movie of my dreams that the actual Anne Rice movies didn't achieve, and in a way it was: these beautiful creatures in beautiful clothes drifting through centuries, drinking in art and literature and music and science and technology with blood as more of an afterthought, some of them angsty and others full of endless wonder, traveling to the corners of the globe, living away from and reuniting with their beloveds with a depth and permanence of feeling most of us can only envy. It appeals to all the same desires to become a vampire for the sake of becoming the ultimate aesthete.
In another way, it was like Der Himmel über Berlin/Wings of Desire: a love song and a dirge for a city (in this case, Detroit) at its nadir, complete with long shots of damaged architecture and indie music performances that capture something about the current era, while a pair of benevolent supernatural creatures watches humanity from a remove. Not that it achieved the level of quality of Wings of Desire, but the resemblance was remarkable.
Which is not to imply that Only Lovers wasn't also very much its own movie. The plot summaries don't do it justice. This is the kind of movie I want when I complain that today's mainstream movies don't leave time to think about anything, including all their plot holes or nonsensical...ness. This movie takes its time, because the characters have all the time in the world. (When they talk about a white dwarf that's only 30 light-years away, you realize they could actually visit it on some spacecraft one day without having to worry about intergenerational planning or cryo.) The movie talks about appreciating culture(s) and nature to the fullest. Tilda Swinton's Eve literally stops to smell the Amanita muscaria. It's about different approaches to life and immortality. It's about maintaining a relationship. It's sort of about the recent history of American music. It touches on elitism/privilege and the contamination of our bodies and our planet.
And it's funny, and beautiful, and tense in the last third when the fragility of their survival becomes clear, and full of references to artists throughout the centuries. Although, if I can nitpick for a sec, you'd think that a pair of vampires as old and educated as these two would have more diverse and obscure references and favorites to toss back and forth. Byron I'll take because Tom Hiddleston's Adam follows so much in his image, and Tesla, too, because he's among the favorites of today's hipsters, whom Adam also embodies-slash-laments, and Darwin worked because it made a good joke/point. I just would have liked less well known names in the mix, and more subtlety. Adam putting on a name tag that said "Dr. Faust" was great, but it lost a little something special when another character called it out. The photo/illustration wall in Adam's apartment did a better job. (Oh, ha, and in one corner was the same pic of Neil Young I posted about the other day.) Unless the point was for us to get all the references and therefore empathize even more with the characters for what they love. Or maybe the lesser references are meant to be uncovered on repeat viewing, among the records strewn across Adam's apartment and the books Eve browses while packing her suitcases.
Okay, but also, since Adam is supposed to deeply appreciate science and electrical engineering, it made me cringe when he said to Eve that Einstein's spooky action at a distance isn't a theory because it's proven. Ugh, writers, you should know that in science, a theory is a pretty damn strong case, and you can't prove something, only disprove it.
Also also, apparently in this universe, vampirism bestows not only fangs (great makeup job there), pale skin and luminous eyes but also very dry hair.
In sum, highly recommended even when it's a bit ridiculous, & want to see again.
ETA: And here is a perfectly valid dissenting opinion from
daasgrrl!
no subject
Date: Apr. 27th, 2014 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 29th, 2014 01:10 am (UTC)Do you know, I didn't catch any trailers beforehand? I just watched a couple on YouTube to check out what you might have seen. They capture the movie well! Maybe too well - the trailers hit a lot of the punchlines.
no subject
Date: Apr. 28th, 2014 04:50 pm (UTC)That's a problem I often have with movie depictions of erudite, sophisticated types (looking at you, Dr. Lecter) -- the script usually just gives them names to drop, famous enough names that everyone in the audience will have heard of them; and it always leaves me with the suspicion that the characters are affecting more knowledge than they really have. But then I'm a terrible snob.
no subject
Date: Apr. 29th, 2014 01:02 am (UTC)Ha, I like that angle. In this case I enjoyed the portraits of the characters so much that I went straight for implicating the writer/director. Your alternative didn't occur to me, but now it'll be in the back of my mind the next time something like this comes up!
no subject
Date: Apr. 29th, 2014 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 29th, 2014 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 30th, 2014 11:03 pm (UTC)