Silver Screen Resolution: Only Lovers Left Alive

For my 2018 Resolution Project, I decided to take a page out of Lane’s book and do my own Silver Screen Resolution (hence the Take Two part of the title). There are a lot of movies out there I haven’t seen but feel like I should have, or movies that I’ve simply wanted to see and have yet to get around to it. With a deadline of some kind, now I’ll have to finally make a point to find them, get them, and watch them. My rules for the resolution are slightly different in that:

1. They must be spec-fic (this has not changed).
2. The movie will not be one that is in theaters or that would be part of a Sound Off!
3. They don’t have to be popular – or even something folks have heard about.

But I’ve decided to take my resolution to the next level as well, since I had more than 12 movies on my list that I wanted to see. And since we’re in “Take Two” mode, I might as well up the ante: I will instead be seeing two spec fic movies per month rather than just one. Last month I ran into some vampires that were less than impressive. Can Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston do better?

No Spoilers (not much to spoil, really…)

I first heard about this movie a few years back when I was hunting for decent romance films that wouldn’t leave me a sobbing wreck using up an entire box of tissues. That’s not my style. I want something that will leave me feeling good in some fashion. I judged the book by it’s cover, so to speak, on this one. I wasn’t sure how this film would pan out, given its movie poster. Was this in the 70s? What exactly was the plot going to be like? Would it have an ending I liked? IMDB didn’t give me much to go on: A depressed musician reunites with his lover. Though their romance, which has already endured several centuries, is disrupted by the arrival of her uncontrollable younger sister. The only way to find out was to watch, hence its addition to my list.

The opening credits alone got me more interested. John Hurt was in this movie? Anton Yelchin? Mia Wasikowska? Jeffrey Wright? Dang. Ok. We had ourselves a movie. And I already liked the visuals and sound the movie offered me. A slow spin on a starry sky with some chill yet moody electric guitar.

The story really is pretty simple. Rather than have a start point for action and a concrete ending, it’s more like a slice of life look at a pair of vampires. Adam (Hiddleston) is a musician who loves original instruments, making music, and in general just doing his own thing. He lives in Detroit in an old house and bribes a phlebotomist (Wright) into giving him blood. Eve (Swinton) adores books and poetry, lives in Tangier, and is friends with the one and only Christopher Marlow (Hurt) who has his own supplier of blood which he also provides to Eve. But Adam is getting bummed out with life and watching us humans (or as he calls us, zombies) ruin things and just suck at life in general. Eve is happy to see things move and change and decides to give Adam a visit. Apparently they’re husband and wife, but I guess when you’re an ageless vampire you can spend years apart and be cool living on opposite ends of the earth from one another. So they get together and, well, just spend time together. Everything is going swimmingly until Eve’s “sister” (not related by blood — just fellow vampires) Ava (Wasikowska) shows up and kind of ruins everything with her overzealousness. She’s the kind of vampire that loves being a vampire and gives zero craps about the consequences. It’s not hard to figure out what happens from there.

Ava’s here to ruin everything.

While a few things felt a little on the clichéd or too obvious on the metaphor side — the names Adam and Eve, the fact that Adam wore all black while Eve wore all white — it wasn’t anything really bothersome. Everything in this movie felt like it was supposed to be there. Simple but effective shots of decrepit Detroit buildings. Docks crowded with old boats in Tangier. The kind of thing that other films do to seem artsy but serves no purpose. Here it works because this is the world Adam and Eve live in. Real places rather than the usual glamorous stuff we get from vampire movies. Likewise, the film shows us things they see — and how they see it. Adam sees sadness and ruin. But Eve looks at things, even if they are crumbling, with childlike wonder, which is fascinating to see in a vampire as old as she is. She lives in the present even with a head full of memories that date back past medieval times. She has wonder at things, which I don’t believe I’ve ever really seen in a vampire, from book or film. Enjoyment in the now, yes, like Ava or Lestat of Anne Rice’s world, but never wonder.

Adam is bored while Eve marvels at Detroit.

On that same page, I love Adam’s endless fascination of music. He’s drawn to special instruments. He loves to play. Loves to listen. He and Eve may be vampires, but they still stare and admire things we humans do. They still marvel at creativity, and that was one of the things making Adam so bummed about the world. He lamented that humans were afraid of our own imaginations.

For as slow as the movie is, I was never bored. I was too busy gazing at the empty shell of some of Detroit’s buildings or just the scenery in general. Everything is filmed at night. And not just lame at-night-with-movie-lights. I’m talking at night with street lights. Car headlights. Normal darkness. Sure, there are a few places where movie lighting was required, but for the most part you are in the dark with them, and I appreciated that aspect. The movie is two hours, so it is entirely likely other people will get impatient. I admit to wondering where exactly the plot was going at times. When I did see the top of the arc, it wasn’t hard to see the problem the characters would face. While that roadblock, too, was a bit on the cliché side, I suppose it was inevitable. I’m mostly sad because I liked the character it affected. Such a shame.

Detroit in the dark.

I enjoyed the music as well. There’s the music that Adam creates, which is moody and often discordant, but I like the feelings it evokes. They play records and discover a singer in a bar while roaming Tangier. At one point Adam picks up a violin — which made me wonder, because he’s into rare instruments, whether it was a Stradivarius. I also wondered whether that was Tom Hiddleston playing. I honestly couldn’t tell if they’d tweaked it to make it look like he was and someone else truly played or not. Because his finger movements were impressive. Professional-looking impressive. And in the credits at the very end there was a listing for “Violin Coach” so who knows.

Tilda Swinton looks as unique as always. If I saw her as Eve walking down the street toward me I might avoid her simply because she looks like an otherworldly creature that should be given space. Unlike the useless (or was it supposed to be stylish? Whatever.) nudity in The Hunger, you won’t find that here. There’s a single shot of the two of them together nude, but it’s just…normal. Nice, even. The atmosphere of the movie is spot-on the entire time. And yes, even though they are vampires and display their power in small increments (the parting shot of Eve is excellent — and I love how she politely says “Excusez-moi” before going full vampire on someone), I admire how they still love each other so much even after so long. Their wonder with each other hasn’t ceased with the years either.

Suffice to say, I liked this movie. It was solid. I would also like to say excellent job to whoever did the design for Adam’s house and all of the wires and collections and little things he had in there to make it what it was. To whoever did the scouting locations for Detroit and Tangier. I only found myself with a few questions unanswered, but I don’t much mind. They weren’t all that important anyway.

If you feel like something different. If you want to see vampires as they might perhaps naturally go through the world today, or if you just want to see Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton in the same movie together, give this one a go.

Excusez-moi?