Last Jim Jarmush' opens up the 54th Thessaloniki IFF

54th Thessaloniki International Film Festival:

JIM JARMUSH opens it up

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE

 Because the night belongs to lovers

Two vampires.

One is an underground musician,
hidden from all and everything
in a dark Detroit.

The other one is a woman, living in Tangiers.

They will never die of old age.

They have seen number of cities and worlds...

... and even though so inloved with each other,

they do not need to spend together

every second,

as they have the certainty

of seeing each other

for ever and ever...

 He is a bit distressed lately...

She decides to meet him

and revive his spirit...

And everything would have been quite fluid

if her younger sister wouldn’t have irrupted in her savage manner.

One could start

by saying this is a vampires film,

and it truelly is one,

because:

a)     they feed with blood

b)    they are and they aren’t dead

c)     they live at night

So this film

is the reboot

that vampires needed. 

Only Lovers Left Alive is also

a film that speaks

about things
more interesting than vampires,

among which:

a)     the feeling of freedom

and omniscience

and restlessness

that you have

when exploring a city by night

b)    the decay of matter

as the inevitable human way

towards THE END

c)     The nostalgia

that is necessary

to any kind of artistic creation, 

and especially to music...

Tilda Swinton is Eve,

an optimistic vampire

that loves litterature in all languages

and who dances on forgotten classics

of the ‘60ies rock’n’roll.

She is wearing white

and has more energy

when wandering at night t

han what i get

after 3 ristretti.

She answers to Adam’s depression

with a sympathetic dose of “get over it”!!!

Tom Hiddleston is Adam,

a depressed and melancolical vampire

who writes prog-rock.

He collects old guitars

and antique string instruments,  

Gretsch and Rickenbacker and co.

Jim Jarmusch described his character

at the Press Conference

@ the 54th Thessaloniki International Film Festival

as a “Hamlet as played by Syd Barrett”.

Adam loves Eve

and back

for centuries

(because with those names

they are also obliged

to be some archetypes).

Detroit and Tangiers:

two cities with an imperial past,

vivid centres of creation,

raining with cultural

and social diversity ...

And then ups, an economic crash,

a social movement,

an eyelash movement long as a deceny,

...and  Detroit and Tangers become ruined,

two ghost cities,

empty,

uninhabited...

 The vampires drive a vintage automobile

on the streets of Detroit

at night.  

And Jarmusch reveals the beauty

of abandoned cinema halls

turned into parking lots,

of exposed bricks and metal,

of precarious buildings

on the verge of dying...

The two lovers hang out in Tangiers

(one of Jarmush’s favorite image at the same Press Conference in Thessaloniki) transporting blood containers.

And Jarmusch quotes here

a scene from  In the Mood For Love

(another film on the contrast

between

the permanence of memory

and the unbearable unpermanence of love,

and about

wearing sunglasses at night)...

And suddenly

one feels in the cinema hall

that marrocoan smell of salt

in the air of the night,

the sand in the wind

on the shore of the Mediterranean...

There is a sublime magic

in those ruins

and I am not descovering this now

and neither did  Jarmusch,

or the Romantic poets

that I love so much

and so do the two lovers...

Just think

how it must have been

to watch the Punic Wars,

to play chess with  Byron

or have a bad wine with Poe

and still being here

to tell the story...

And then one understands

the weight of the passing of time...

The impression of all those
useless places and things

that remain

after people desappear...

...and one understands

that the superiority

that one could have

after having lived for centuries

is in fact a sort of crepuscular ennui,

so difficult to overcome... 

And yes,

all this existentialism

begins to weight a tone.

Only Lovers Left Alive

is a film where vampires take themselves seriously,

where they are  

hipsters

obsessed with vintage technology.

They have a taste

for the ruin-porn,

for Orientalism,

they believe in the Shakespeare plot.

And now

... a not that old poem

of mine
that popped in my mind

while I was painfully

watching

this film:

...Our kiss is a secret handshake,

a password.

we love like spies,

like bruised  fighters,

Like children building tree houses.

Our love is serious business...

There is no clean way to enter
the heavy machinery of the heart.

...Truth is:

My love for you is the only empire

I will ever build.

When it falls,

like all empires do,

my career in empire building

will be over.

I shall retreat to an island.

I shall hang out in libraries

and public parks.

I shall fold the clean clothes.

I shall do the dishes.

I shall never again dream

of having the whole world...

Only Lovers Left Alive

is above all

a film about love

as resistence against

the logorhee of time...

 This poem says

that the absurd thing we do in love

is to build an empire

around the one we love,

surrounding him/her

with glittery

extraordinary

and sanguineous things,

with time travels,

with spy stories

and fantastic reincarnations...

 But then one day

...love ends.

...Something changes.

...And the empire falls.

Because that’s what empires do.

And then that’s it....

...after the fall of the empire,

there is nothing else to do...

Or just to clean the dishes...

In Jarmusch’s  film

the only lovers left alive

are not dead.

They are Adam and Eve,

those who destroyed Paradise on Earth, creators of life on Earth.

Those who love each other

even when they mess out.  

They are Adam and Eve who,

even though the engine broke

on their night flight

and they missed the connection

in Madrid,

they still catch another flight

for seeing each other

and being together

other than on  Skype

...(and yes

there are vampires using Skype).

Jarmush’s love

is about watching Empires fall

and then having the imagination

and the power

of projecting new ones.

Love is accepting

that sometimes
one thinks

he builds a cathedral

when in fact

it is only

a  bungalow.

Love is adapting

at living in the ruins

and may be even finding

they are beautifull.

Love is resisting time,

cultivate a garden,

being surprised by the mystery

of the existence of mushrooms...

Only Lovers Left Alive

has the typical Jarmusch humour,

his tastes,

his culture,

his love for music...

But in the end,

except the feeling
that we had a coffee with Jarmush,

this film spins in the void...

...in the double circular

and repeated movement

of a vinyl ...

...and of the camera that travels around, from above,

and then from closer and closer,

the sleepy/awaken bodies,

the distant/close bodies

of the two lovers,

timeless and ageless...

In that Jarmusch becomes hypnotic,

amused and amusing.

Profoundly human.

 

...Only love

only these two lovers

stand,

transposed by the mesmerizing “Hal”

as sang by the Lebanese Yasmine Hamdan,

as if

there was no tomorrow…

…but only TODAY…

again and again

for thousand of years…

 Equally lyrical and pop,

Jim Jarmusch states once again that 

”… we own the Night”...

…Because the night belongs to lovers…

Giulia Dobre