(Eric Rohmer, France, 1996)
I feel a personal affinity to the work of Rohmer's that I've seen. Not that I'm entirely comfortable with this affinity; there's a lot in these movies, and particularly about his male characters, that's quite clearly unlikable. But like this film's protagonist, the taciturn, boyish Gaspard, I find myself often running aground on the shoals of indecision, alternately idealistic and cynical, and befuddled by love, or lack thereof. Perhaps that's an unfair assessment, both of myself and of Gaspard, who can't seem appreciate the fact that his biggest problem is choosing between three vivacious and beautiful young women, all of whom are into him in one way or another.
The stark, rhythmic nature of Rohmer's style always strikes me as a master class in precision and restraint. His frames are as elegant as they are canny, and become strikingly expressive with the smallest movements and juxtapositions - they both highlight the work of his excellent actors and underline his personal perspective. It's possible to see Rohmer as a kind of buttoned-down, classical New Wave master, in that his treatment of sex is predominantly inferred and often symbolic. And he is classical, easily the most classical of the New Wave, by interest and by temperament. But the work is never prudish or convention-bound, even if it's never explicit. Rather, sex is the engine of Rohmer's imagination, and his careful way with cinema can be surprisingly, torridly erotic, even if it does so through omission and implication.
A Summer's Tale works well as the story of a frustrated romance; it's clear from the outset that Margot is the right girl for Gaspard, but he doesn't realize this until its too late. Indeed, by the time he realizes his affections, he has already decided to sacrifice it in the name of artistic purity, although there's the suggestion that this is merely an excuse to avoid asserting himself. The film plays with the notions of fate and coincidence; while Gaspard has the kind of listlessness and empty-vessel curiosity that is often the hallmark of an artistic type, it finally seems to see his indolence as a flaw. Does he high-mindedly choose his artistic ambitions over the possibility of romance, of sexual release and immediate bliss? Or does he merely flee, unable to live in the moment, unable to pursue his desires, and offer up aesthetic purity as cover for his cowardice?
Besides the delicate, evocative mood, and the confidently understated philosophical musings, what I appreciated most in A Summer's Tale was the facility with behavior. I'm not familiar with people praising Rohmer's movies for their psychological insight, but this seems particularly exemplary of that quality. In these films, and it seems as well that the same is generally true of French culture, interactions - particularly between men and women - have a kind of theatrical air. The tone can shift quickly, even bewilderingly, from affected nonchalance to high drama, but one gets the sense that it's never without a certain quotient of self-consciousness. Much is discussed, very little is resolved. Plenty of the conversations in this film were perfectly familiar, and not at all diminished by feeling a bit written. But what can seem artificial might indeed point to a larger, cultural level of artifice that we rough-hewn and pragmatic American's simply lack. Underneath it are emotions - raw, unpredictable, dangerous, decisive.
Rohmer's solution to this is cinematic; while we hear much straight talk about romantic "types," about love, fate, and principles, what do we see? Lots of lots of nubile flesh, filmed with frank ardor by a man in his mid-seventies. It's no coincidence that Rohmer made so many of his films at the beach. The young, mostly-revealed bodies suggest deep, oceanic currents of desire that cannot be addressed directly, either by the director or by the characters. The camera tells the truth that the words only hint at. This, it seems to me, is the source of Rohmer's obsession: the physical fact of strange, wild biology that troubled his exquisitely refined mind. Sex is everywhere, but it cannot be addressed. For some unspeakable reason, it cannot even be accessed. (It's worth noting that for all of the fetching females he finds in his orbit - barely clothed, although never fully naked - Gaspard never actually gets laid on his summer vacation.) It's tantalizing, even a little unsettling, to imagine what lurked within, and what movies we'd see if he'd had more direct access to it.
(It should be noted that while with Rohmer, I do think that sex is what makes spot run, you can't reduce his movies to that subject alone. He seems equally to understand the longing for like-minded companionship, for the love that can flourish from intellectual affinity, for the soulfulness of romantic synchronicity. It's just that he seems to see the contingency of the universe, with all of those spinning bodies, as being a kind of infernal impediment to such synchronicity. I understand that Rohmer was married for all of his adult life to one woman. I can't help but wonder what that relationship was like.)
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
La Ceremonie
(Claude Chabrol, France, 1995)
Two movies in, and it's hard to know what to take away from Chabrol. People are shit? He's not entirely that pessimistic, no, but his worldview seems depressingly closed; he delivers his world-weariness with a cold insight that could be mistaken for wisdom, but there's no sense of possibility outside of the frames, and only the slightest hints of mystery. Chabrol comes off as something of a connoisseur of human duplicity and frailty. His familiarity with a range of human behavior is striking, but he appears not to know what to do with it. In this film, there are moments of tenderness that only add to the bitterness of the conclusion - and Chabrol is a filmmaker of strict, even severe conclusions - that amorality walks among us, that fate is utterly indifferent, and that a good life is merely lucky and indulgent.
Being formidably French, he manages almost to convince us that such an outlook, bereft of ideals and utterly insensible to any hint of redemption, might be correct, or at least bearable. He's a smoothie - he manages to make cynicism go down easy. But what's beneath all of it? It seems to me that this begs a serious question of La Politique des Auteurs, of which Chabrol was a lifelong exponent and example. Does the personality of the author, no matter how limited, so long as it is present, constitute enough to obtain quality? His formal control is unmistakable, just like his cynicism, however gleeful it occasionally seems. But why should that be enough? A doctrinaire reading would have us quiver with exaltation from a mind so powerfully channeled. But why should we care so much for his company? His imagination seems fatally limited to wry distillations of bad behavior: the shallowness and self-absorption of his bourgeois victims, and the shame, resentment, and murderous amorality of the perps. All in all, it's a handsome film that marks the presence of a chilly, stubborn mind.
Two movies in, and it's hard to know what to take away from Chabrol. People are shit? He's not entirely that pessimistic, no, but his worldview seems depressingly closed; he delivers his world-weariness with a cold insight that could be mistaken for wisdom, but there's no sense of possibility outside of the frames, and only the slightest hints of mystery. Chabrol comes off as something of a connoisseur of human duplicity and frailty. His familiarity with a range of human behavior is striking, but he appears not to know what to do with it. In this film, there are moments of tenderness that only add to the bitterness of the conclusion - and Chabrol is a filmmaker of strict, even severe conclusions - that amorality walks among us, that fate is utterly indifferent, and that a good life is merely lucky and indulgent.
Being formidably French, he manages almost to convince us that such an outlook, bereft of ideals and utterly insensible to any hint of redemption, might be correct, or at least bearable. He's a smoothie - he manages to make cynicism go down easy. But what's beneath all of it? It seems to me that this begs a serious question of La Politique des Auteurs, of which Chabrol was a lifelong exponent and example. Does the personality of the author, no matter how limited, so long as it is present, constitute enough to obtain quality? His formal control is unmistakable, just like his cynicism, however gleeful it occasionally seems. But why should that be enough? A doctrinaire reading would have us quiver with exaltation from a mind so powerfully channeled. But why should we care so much for his company? His imagination seems fatally limited to wry distillations of bad behavior: the shallowness and self-absorption of his bourgeois victims, and the shame, resentment, and murderous amorality of the perps. All in all, it's a handsome film that marks the presence of a chilly, stubborn mind.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Soigne Ta Droite
(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1987)
A typically Godardian mix of the beautiful and the ponderous. I'm still learning how to watch his films; to keep up with them, to seek out whatever pattern might exist, to let them flow like water down a cataract, sitting patiently with my bewilderment.
The film is consistently, magnificently beautiful. I don't think I've ever been so aware of the quality of JLG's eye; his knack for color and composition, his subtle and exceptionally sensitive way with light, is tremendous. And his cuts are as decisive as heartbeats. There's also plenty of Godard's typical combination of the wry with the silly, made all the more prominent by the deadly (literally) serious subject matter. It's all about Art and Death; and while certain sequences and moments do contain surprising volumes of emotion, there's much else that appears wildly, unproductively incoherent. There is, for instance, Godard's famous penchant for philosophical voiceover. But not merely philosophical; this is reading from a term-paper philosophical. Godard is undoubtedly a visual poet of the first order, but his facility with words, at least as they appear in his movies, leaves much to be desired, and the discrepancy between the two induces friction. Not good friction, either.
It's clear that by 1987 Godard was well into his grab-bag montage phase, constructing his films with the barest semblance of a structure. It's not a matter of story; post-Breathless, it was clear that he had no interest in story, character, at least in the classical sense. But even a structure based on theme is too rigid for JLG. His later films are sometimes called essayistic, but essays have every bit as much predetermined structure as fiction. Better to call Godard diaristic. He thinks of an image, an idea, a swatch of text, and he's off to the races. It's as if he were building a model train set while the train cars were already running. He just keeps adding track. It's not purely linear - plenty of motifs are repeated, and the film does have a shape - but it's a shaggy dog story, a virtuosic improvisation, and one that still falters tonally. This may be his great flaw as an artist; even more than his involuted philosophical tract-mongering, his constant stream of intertextual references that he fires off with compulsive, Tourettish abandon, is his desultory way with mood. The film swings in and out of seriousness; of course, even when he's being funny, he's being serious, but there's a distance to his stance, a giddiness borne of reticence. Overflowing with ideas and images, a film like Soigne Ta Droite nonetheless feels like it's holding something back. It might be that Godard's just flying at an altitude beyond my mortal powers of sensation and comprehension, but there's enough that's recognizably human about his work that I wonder: how much more do I need to learn? And how much is just, finally, private and unknowable?
A typically Godardian mix of the beautiful and the ponderous. I'm still learning how to watch his films; to keep up with them, to seek out whatever pattern might exist, to let them flow like water down a cataract, sitting patiently with my bewilderment.
The film is consistently, magnificently beautiful. I don't think I've ever been so aware of the quality of JLG's eye; his knack for color and composition, his subtle and exceptionally sensitive way with light, is tremendous. And his cuts are as decisive as heartbeats. There's also plenty of Godard's typical combination of the wry with the silly, made all the more prominent by the deadly (literally) serious subject matter. It's all about Art and Death; and while certain sequences and moments do contain surprising volumes of emotion, there's much else that appears wildly, unproductively incoherent. There is, for instance, Godard's famous penchant for philosophical voiceover. But not merely philosophical; this is reading from a term-paper philosophical. Godard is undoubtedly a visual poet of the first order, but his facility with words, at least as they appear in his movies, leaves much to be desired, and the discrepancy between the two induces friction. Not good friction, either.
It's clear that by 1987 Godard was well into his grab-bag montage phase, constructing his films with the barest semblance of a structure. It's not a matter of story; post-Breathless, it was clear that he had no interest in story, character, at least in the classical sense. But even a structure based on theme is too rigid for JLG. His later films are sometimes called essayistic, but essays have every bit as much predetermined structure as fiction. Better to call Godard diaristic. He thinks of an image, an idea, a swatch of text, and he's off to the races. It's as if he were building a model train set while the train cars were already running. He just keeps adding track. It's not purely linear - plenty of motifs are repeated, and the film does have a shape - but it's a shaggy dog story, a virtuosic improvisation, and one that still falters tonally. This may be his great flaw as an artist; even more than his involuted philosophical tract-mongering, his constant stream of intertextual references that he fires off with compulsive, Tourettish abandon, is his desultory way with mood. The film swings in and out of seriousness; of course, even when he's being funny, he's being serious, but there's a distance to his stance, a giddiness borne of reticence. Overflowing with ideas and images, a film like Soigne Ta Droite nonetheless feels like it's holding something back. It might be that Godard's just flying at an altitude beyond my mortal powers of sensation and comprehension, but there's enough that's recognizably human about his work that I wonder: how much more do I need to learn? And how much is just, finally, private and unknowable?
Sunday, June 15, 2014
The Immigrant
(James Gray, France/US, 2014)
A deeply felt and gorgeously rendered film, but one that nonetheless, sadly, disappoints. Gray is most easily categorized as a classicist, but his emphasis on raw emotion - chaotic, sincere, naked emotion - and acute psychological depth makes him much more than a craftsman in thrall to any single tradition. But he is still a craftsman, and the fascination and frustration I derive from his work seems to obtain from the strange friction he generates by simultaneously revering classical conventions and working in his own, idiosyncratic world.
I was in and out of the story of The Immigrant. It might be that Gray is too enamored of the elegance he sees in Golden Age masterworks; the story plods along at times, and threatens to veer into stilted sentimentality. It's all so damn sincere. There is a discomfiting innocence about the movie, and it grows out of the characters, and I can't tell if Gray actually shares it or he's committing the grave artistic and moral sin of regarding the past with a kind of precious naivete - the "simpler times" fallacy. I don't mean that the characters are simple - far from it - but the world is painted in such stark terms, the stakes so immediately obvious and familiar, that it almost isn't enough that the characters are depicted with such deftness, their tortured psyches revealed painstakingly and with unmistakable love.
Perhaps it's the lack of any true villains. Perhaps it's the fact the Eva - while utterly captivating in her quiet, almost statuesque dignity - isn't a terribly active character, and her transparent goodness, despite the occasional flashes of anger and guilt, is never really challenged. For all of his somberness, it might just be that Gray is too optimistic about his characters.
It has to be said; there's a corniness to Gray. Part of his appeal is in his owning of that corniness; his courageous willingness to lay open his heart and the way that it bleeds for his characters. But for all of his commitment to emotional authenticity, he is a filmmaker who is perhaps just a bit too enamored of convention. The world he depicts is so distant, and so loaded with potential cliche, that he appears to falter.
But the emotional commitment is unstinting, and the world he creates, one of shadows and stage-lights and worn surfaces, with the strange admixture of hope and despair, is a genuinely powerful accomplishment. It's a film I'll be revisiting, and which I suspect will contain new insights and layers of experience.
A deeply felt and gorgeously rendered film, but one that nonetheless, sadly, disappoints. Gray is most easily categorized as a classicist, but his emphasis on raw emotion - chaotic, sincere, naked emotion - and acute psychological depth makes him much more than a craftsman in thrall to any single tradition. But he is still a craftsman, and the fascination and frustration I derive from his work seems to obtain from the strange friction he generates by simultaneously revering classical conventions and working in his own, idiosyncratic world.
I was in and out of the story of The Immigrant. It might be that Gray is too enamored of the elegance he sees in Golden Age masterworks; the story plods along at times, and threatens to veer into stilted sentimentality. It's all so damn sincere. There is a discomfiting innocence about the movie, and it grows out of the characters, and I can't tell if Gray actually shares it or he's committing the grave artistic and moral sin of regarding the past with a kind of precious naivete - the "simpler times" fallacy. I don't mean that the characters are simple - far from it - but the world is painted in such stark terms, the stakes so immediately obvious and familiar, that it almost isn't enough that the characters are depicted with such deftness, their tortured psyches revealed painstakingly and with unmistakable love.
Perhaps it's the lack of any true villains. Perhaps it's the fact the Eva - while utterly captivating in her quiet, almost statuesque dignity - isn't a terribly active character, and her transparent goodness, despite the occasional flashes of anger and guilt, is never really challenged. For all of his somberness, it might just be that Gray is too optimistic about his characters.
It has to be said; there's a corniness to Gray. Part of his appeal is in his owning of that corniness; his courageous willingness to lay open his heart and the way that it bleeds for his characters. But for all of his commitment to emotional authenticity, he is a filmmaker who is perhaps just a bit too enamored of convention. The world he depicts is so distant, and so loaded with potential cliche, that he appears to falter.
But the emotional commitment is unstinting, and the world he creates, one of shadows and stage-lights and worn surfaces, with the strange admixture of hope and despair, is a genuinely powerful accomplishment. It's a film I'll be revisiting, and which I suspect will contain new insights and layers of experience.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Godzilla
(Gareth Edwards, USA, 2014)
It seems as though as I age (which fact has lately been especially present in my mind, given my recent BDay) I become less tolerant of the mayhem so avidly delivered by massive-scale action movies. All of the destruction and suffering: more and more, these films seem to me - with their countless glimpses of anonymous victims being dispatched en masse - to be an adroit expression of some troubling cultural pathology. "Disaster porn" is feeling more pornographic, lately, for whatever reason; rather than assisting me in suspending my disbelief, I can't help but be reminded of the potential real catastrophes we all face in this troubled, warming world. I imagine those risks, what all of this chaos reflects psychologically, even spiritually, and the experience quickly becomes a real bummer.
Godzilla delivers Godzilla. The beast is rendered with love and high VFX craft, and his appearances are reliably, satisfyingly awesome. But much of the rest of the film is a wash; the story begins in the key of the hysterical and winds down in the listless. People have been slagging Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and it's true that he doesn't have much of a character to play, but Bryan Cranston is more poorly served by the director/screenwriters, charged with emoting enough for this film and several sequels. He acts his heart out, but can only chew scenery. It's a lot of jagged raging to no end, other than to indicate to the audience that this movie is "serious" because it employs serious Actors doing some serious Acting for approximately 1/35th of the run-time.
That said, there are some truly majestic moments to be found. It's too bad they couldn't have appeared in a better film. Like so much studio mega-fare, it falters by aiming for, and hitting, the middle; it's neither rambunctiously silly and over-the-top, nor is it half as serious as it wants to be. The audience I saw it with, in a nearly sold-out screening, clapped and cheered at several key moments, all of them involving the titular monster, and it was clear that what was relished most was the huge, lumbering, fun of Godzilla being Godzilla. The rest is superfluous, mostly.
Making G the hero/savior -or at least the lesser evil of the evil monsters - is an understandable move, and not intrinsically wrong, but it felt unsatisfying in this case.
It seems as though as I age (which fact has lately been especially present in my mind, given my recent BDay) I become less tolerant of the mayhem so avidly delivered by massive-scale action movies. All of the destruction and suffering: more and more, these films seem to me - with their countless glimpses of anonymous victims being dispatched en masse - to be an adroit expression of some troubling cultural pathology. "Disaster porn" is feeling more pornographic, lately, for whatever reason; rather than assisting me in suspending my disbelief, I can't help but be reminded of the potential real catastrophes we all face in this troubled, warming world. I imagine those risks, what all of this chaos reflects psychologically, even spiritually, and the experience quickly becomes a real bummer.
Godzilla delivers Godzilla. The beast is rendered with love and high VFX craft, and his appearances are reliably, satisfyingly awesome. But much of the rest of the film is a wash; the story begins in the key of the hysterical and winds down in the listless. People have been slagging Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and it's true that he doesn't have much of a character to play, but Bryan Cranston is more poorly served by the director/screenwriters, charged with emoting enough for this film and several sequels. He acts his heart out, but can only chew scenery. It's a lot of jagged raging to no end, other than to indicate to the audience that this movie is "serious" because it employs serious Actors doing some serious Acting for approximately 1/35th of the run-time.
That said, there are some truly majestic moments to be found. It's too bad they couldn't have appeared in a better film. Like so much studio mega-fare, it falters by aiming for, and hitting, the middle; it's neither rambunctiously silly and over-the-top, nor is it half as serious as it wants to be. The audience I saw it with, in a nearly sold-out screening, clapped and cheered at several key moments, all of them involving the titular monster, and it was clear that what was relished most was the huge, lumbering, fun of Godzilla being Godzilla. The rest is superfluous, mostly.
Making G the hero/savior -or at least the lesser evil of the evil monsters - is an understandable move, and not intrinsically wrong, but it felt unsatisfying in this case.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
American Hustle
(David O. Russell, USA, 2013)
All in all, it's a strictly lightweight affair, but it packs in more freewheeling fun per square-inch of screen than most features in recent memory; in his aggressively witty way, Russell has crafted a near-masterpiece of cinema.
It's true that it's missing a vital component of depth; the film's flaw, which keeps it from reaching the heights of greatness is the stubborn insistence on aiming just shy of high. What makes this particularly noticeable is the apparent perspicuity of Russell, whose best stuff, even when very funny, can be positively lacerating. Watching him scrap his way into the mainstream has been fascinating, and his very careful calibration of his anarchic sensibility to certain formal conventions is a feat of dazzling deftness, even if it eventually results in an underwhelming experience. Therefore, it's easy to see Hustle as very personal for the director, even if it eventually takes the form of self-flattery: like his grifter heroes, he's someone who's worked tenaciously to make a space for himself in a harsh, competitive world.
As the con artists say, you have to be in it "from the feet up;" only a total commitment to the role you're playing will suffice. Russell commits himself utterly in this unabashedly sentimental story, but his conviction is so complete that he winds up winning over the audience, even through the various excesses of the narrative. At the same time, the whole film hums with a giddy self-consciousness; it might be the most meta movie of the last decade. The theme of performance is underlined so many times that it would be absurd if it weren't the raison d'etre for the whole enterprise. The action is basically a succession of acting showcases, and everybody brings their A game. It's rare to see such an orgy of thespian excess, and it would be a complete disaster if it weren't cast with such top-notch and eager players. In scene after scene, the actors find themselves to be kids in a candy store, with dialogue that crackles in its manic loopiness, and they all jump gamely in, and the results are very satisfying indeed.
Lots of the cinema-making is noticeably derivative of 70s Scorsese, but Russell does have a way with the camera, and once again, his willingness to throw himself into the material redeems even the most shamelessly secondhand of creative choices. And there are some sublimely poetic moments; as much as the phrase "pure cinema" sets my teeth on edge, Russell achieves lovely synergies of music and moving image that recall just that shopworn phrase.
All in all, it's a strictly lightweight affair, but it packs in more freewheeling fun per square-inch of screen than most features in recent memory; in his aggressively witty way, Russell has crafted a near-masterpiece of cinema.
It's true that it's missing a vital component of depth; the film's flaw, which keeps it from reaching the heights of greatness is the stubborn insistence on aiming just shy of high. What makes this particularly noticeable is the apparent perspicuity of Russell, whose best stuff, even when very funny, can be positively lacerating. Watching him scrap his way into the mainstream has been fascinating, and his very careful calibration of his anarchic sensibility to certain formal conventions is a feat of dazzling deftness, even if it eventually results in an underwhelming experience. Therefore, it's easy to see Hustle as very personal for the director, even if it eventually takes the form of self-flattery: like his grifter heroes, he's someone who's worked tenaciously to make a space for himself in a harsh, competitive world.
As the con artists say, you have to be in it "from the feet up;" only a total commitment to the role you're playing will suffice. Russell commits himself utterly in this unabashedly sentimental story, but his conviction is so complete that he winds up winning over the audience, even through the various excesses of the narrative. At the same time, the whole film hums with a giddy self-consciousness; it might be the most meta movie of the last decade. The theme of performance is underlined so many times that it would be absurd if it weren't the raison d'etre for the whole enterprise. The action is basically a succession of acting showcases, and everybody brings their A game. It's rare to see such an orgy of thespian excess, and it would be a complete disaster if it weren't cast with such top-notch and eager players. In scene after scene, the actors find themselves to be kids in a candy store, with dialogue that crackles in its manic loopiness, and they all jump gamely in, and the results are very satisfying indeed.
Lots of the cinema-making is noticeably derivative of 70s Scorsese, but Russell does have a way with the camera, and once again, his willingness to throw himself into the material redeems even the most shamelessly secondhand of creative choices. And there are some sublimely poetic moments; as much as the phrase "pure cinema" sets my teeth on edge, Russell achieves lovely synergies of music and moving image that recall just that shopworn phrase.
Only Lovers Left Alive
(Jim Jarmusch, UK/Germany, 2014)
A night-bound ramble in the Jarmuschian style, in which the dominant, elegiac mood - you could easily call it a funk - is colored by bone-dry humor and some trenchant observations about the thorny criss-crossings of love, life, and Art. It's also Jarmusch at his most classical, hewing to a straightforward story with contrasting characters.
The movie has several moments of loveliness, but there are moments in which the allergy to sunlight - to any adequate amount of illumination, really - felt oppressive. It's possible that the projection, which was, of course, digital, was too dim. I've encountered this problem before, and it's a major bug, giving obvious lie to the idea that DCP will usher in an era of easy, push-button standarization, free of the vagaries of individual theaters and projectionists. If the damp, faded imagery was entirely intentional, than I have only Jarmusch to blame, but I suspect this isn't the case.
Besides these external nuisances, there's a lot to dig into with Only Lovers. Again, it's Jarmusch at his most formally classical, and his handling of the storytelling is masterful in its laconic, down-tempo precision. Adam and Eve's romantic woes resonate, as does the sense of timeless familiarity that they embody, allowing Jarmusch to riff poignantly on the mysterious nature of all great romances. Swinton and Hiddleston - what a name for a duo, by the way - play beautifully off each other, conveying the unfathomable depths of their centuries-long affair with simple glances and gestures. It's a wonderfully understated co-performance.
The film is haunted by history, and what's striking is that despite it's characters spiraling regard, even obsession, with the past (which, wisely, Jarmusch identifies as being a first-cousin of narcissism), what weighs most oppressively is the burden of the present historical moment. The coming catastrophes (there are a few barely-oblique references to climate change, such as when Eve asks Adam if the "wars over water" have begun), the sense of human culture as having finally exhausted itself and hunkering down for the end, is present in almost every frame. Adam is the chief voice for this largely defeatist (but entirely understandable) view, and Eve does a good job of pinpointing the ways that this is a selfish capitulation unworthy of him, but the overall tenor of the picture seems to side more with his male pessimism.
Only Lovers's droll coda, however, also manages to bring these moony fancies down to Earth, as our vampiric heroes, guardians of culture and, to some extent, martyrs for all that is humanly beautiful, yield to their more basic appetites. In their weakness, they also reflect our strength, and the possibility of rising to meet the needs of the moment. Their fate and ours - the undead and the living - are, after all, inextricably intertwined.
Jarmusch slyly punctures his own pretensions of preternatural hipness (which he amusingly casts as supernatural, even) by illustrating the hidden pitfalls of living such a fastidiously curated life. Adam and Eve know all the best that culture has managed to create - in some cases, they knew the creators personally - which means they feel it the most painfully when all the rest of human activity bulldozes over the treasures. To develop a taste for the best means daily countenancing all that doesn't measure up, and all the wonder that will never get its due. On the other hand, such an attitude - the Smeagol-like preciousness about valuing beauty and "keeping" it - has a dark side as well: the hollowness of connoissuership. To be present in the bounty of the moment, to truly be attuned to the beautiful in a constant, active sense - is to be committed to a kind of lightness, a willingness to let go and thus free up time and space for discovery. Eve personifies this ideal, and it's easy to see how many times she must have saved Adam, and herself, from despair. In the end, she's the true hero of the story, and she embodies the heroism that permits survival in the face of overwhelming circumstances. In the world today, it's positively brazen to think this way, and it's an inspiration that Jarmusch is willing to.
A night-bound ramble in the Jarmuschian style, in which the dominant, elegiac mood - you could easily call it a funk - is colored by bone-dry humor and some trenchant observations about the thorny criss-crossings of love, life, and Art. It's also Jarmusch at his most classical, hewing to a straightforward story with contrasting characters.
The movie has several moments of loveliness, but there are moments in which the allergy to sunlight - to any adequate amount of illumination, really - felt oppressive. It's possible that the projection, which was, of course, digital, was too dim. I've encountered this problem before, and it's a major bug, giving obvious lie to the idea that DCP will usher in an era of easy, push-button standarization, free of the vagaries of individual theaters and projectionists. If the damp, faded imagery was entirely intentional, than I have only Jarmusch to blame, but I suspect this isn't the case.
Besides these external nuisances, there's a lot to dig into with Only Lovers. Again, it's Jarmusch at his most formally classical, and his handling of the storytelling is masterful in its laconic, down-tempo precision. Adam and Eve's romantic woes resonate, as does the sense of timeless familiarity that they embody, allowing Jarmusch to riff poignantly on the mysterious nature of all great romances. Swinton and Hiddleston - what a name for a duo, by the way - play beautifully off each other, conveying the unfathomable depths of their centuries-long affair with simple glances and gestures. It's a wonderfully understated co-performance.
The film is haunted by history, and what's striking is that despite it's characters spiraling regard, even obsession, with the past (which, wisely, Jarmusch identifies as being a first-cousin of narcissism), what weighs most oppressively is the burden of the present historical moment. The coming catastrophes (there are a few barely-oblique references to climate change, such as when Eve asks Adam if the "wars over water" have begun), the sense of human culture as having finally exhausted itself and hunkering down for the end, is present in almost every frame. Adam is the chief voice for this largely defeatist (but entirely understandable) view, and Eve does a good job of pinpointing the ways that this is a selfish capitulation unworthy of him, but the overall tenor of the picture seems to side more with his male pessimism.
Only Lovers's droll coda, however, also manages to bring these moony fancies down to Earth, as our vampiric heroes, guardians of culture and, to some extent, martyrs for all that is humanly beautiful, yield to their more basic appetites. In their weakness, they also reflect our strength, and the possibility of rising to meet the needs of the moment. Their fate and ours - the undead and the living - are, after all, inextricably intertwined.
Jarmusch slyly punctures his own pretensions of preternatural hipness (which he amusingly casts as supernatural, even) by illustrating the hidden pitfalls of living such a fastidiously curated life. Adam and Eve know all the best that culture has managed to create - in some cases, they knew the creators personally - which means they feel it the most painfully when all the rest of human activity bulldozes over the treasures. To develop a taste for the best means daily countenancing all that doesn't measure up, and all the wonder that will never get its due. On the other hand, such an attitude - the Smeagol-like preciousness about valuing beauty and "keeping" it - has a dark side as well: the hollowness of connoissuership. To be present in the bounty of the moment, to truly be attuned to the beautiful in a constant, active sense - is to be committed to a kind of lightness, a willingness to let go and thus free up time and space for discovery. Eve personifies this ideal, and it's easy to see how many times she must have saved Adam, and herself, from despair. In the end, she's the true hero of the story, and she embodies the heroism that permits survival in the face of overwhelming circumstances. In the world today, it's positively brazen to think this way, and it's an inspiration that Jarmusch is willing to.
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