Poisoned, Corroded, Desiccated - Our World!

When Jim Jarmusch makes a movie, it's always a major event. Check out "Dead Man," "Ghost Dog," or "Stranger than Paradise," if you have any doubts.  I had read a review of Jarmusch's latest "Only Lovers Left Alive," and the reviewer said something like… "his bleakest movie since "Dead Man." Now, I consider "Dead Man" to be one of the greatest movies of our "modern era," so this was high praise indeed.

"Only Lovers Left Alive," is sort of an "artsy" vampire movie. Which is a good thing. And it's got some simple and powerful things to say about our, damaged, corrupt and zombie-fied world. Jarmusch uses old world, traditional film techniques, which stand out in today's film landscape as radical stylistic choices - beautifully composed shots, slow, richly-detailed sequences, long takes, stately, dramatic camera movements.

And Jarmusch celebrates a world of old, well-made things. Forgotten things. And holds them up as the important, funky, intelligent, refined things of our world. Two Vampires roam the streets of an abandoned, corroded, desiccated Detroit. These Vampires are intelligent, they read the classics, they collect fine instruments and books. They listen to old 45s.  They live in another reality. One of taste and intelligence. They are elites. Artistic aristocrats.  So contrary to our world of the moment.

And the Vampires lament a world gone by. There's the rogues gallery of "heroes" - Iggy Pop, Edgar Allen Poe, Franz Kafka, Christopher Marlowe, Thelonious Monk, Neil Young, Charlie Feathers, Oscar Wilde… But their world has been over-run by the human zombies, who have poisoned the air, the water and even their own blood… oh yes, this is our world...