Monthly Archives: April 2014

Review: Jim Jarmusch finds true romance in ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE

17 Thursday Apr 2014

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"only lovers left alive"Beneath Jim Jarmusch’s cool, hipster veneer beats the heart of a romantic and he proves it with Only Lovers Left Alive, a paean to the constancy of love wrapped in the tale of a vampire couple, soul mates for centuries. Horror nibbles at the edges for the ethereal twosome played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton, but what resonates in this gorgeously photographed, often darkly funny drama is their unconditional devotion to one another.

Jarmusch says he took inspiration for this tale from Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Adam and Eve. Somehow from that congenial author’s fables about the biblical first humans, he glimpsed these ultimate outsiders. And while they may be bloodless, undead creatures, they also may be the warmest in the filmmaker’s universe. Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a morose, reclusive rock musician, living among a huge vinyl record collection and a pile of vintage guitars in the ruins of Detroit. The more exuberant Eve (Tilda Swinton) resides in luxury in a beautifully appointed, book-filled home in Tangier. Though separated by geography, these opposites are as one.

Adam and Eve are also living in a dangerous time for their kind. Their food source, human blood, is no longer reliable. What runs through the zombies’ (as Adam derisively refers to mankind) veins is too often tainted. Eve has a reliable supply of the good stuff from the couple’s friend, playwright Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt). Adam’s connection is a doctor (Jeffrey Wright). But when Adam and Eve come together again in Detroit, a reunion they celebrate with a night out clubbing with Eve’s wild child sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) and Adam’s human friend Ian (Anton Yelchin), their well-ordered lives fall apart, and along with it their connections. The couple is soon on the run and thirsty, very thirsty.

That need to feed prompts fear, but also soul searching for these creatures of the night. Is it time, at last, to reclaim their mortality? Ava calls them snobs, and they are. Scrounging for blood is at odds with the sophisticated images they present to the world. Death as an option would satisfy their vanity. Shuffling off the immortal coil together would be one last grand romantic gesture. It’s something to consider, anyway, on a long night in Tangier.

There is a lot of beauty in Only Lovers Left Alive, starting with the ravishing leads and Yorick Le Saux’s shimmering cinematography. Even Detroit’s desolation looks alluring in the film’s evocative nightscapes. More than its pretty stars and beautiful photography, it is Adam and Eve’s enduring passion that makes this Jarmusch’s most appealing film in years. The vampire trappings, the deadpan humor and the dangerous situation that threatens them are almost beside the point. One gets the feeling that if Adam and Eve’s hearts could still beat, upon seeing each other, they would beat a little faster – even after hundreds of years. –Pam Grady

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE: Jim Jarmusch airs a theory

17 Thursday Apr 2014

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Jim Jarmusch is a Shakespeare fan, not just of the works themselves, but of the theories surrounding their authorship. He is not sure who wrote the plays and sonnets. Perhaps Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford, the man immortalized by Rhys Ifans in Roland Emmerich’s 2011 drama Anonymous, or perhaps Christopher Marlowe. Whoever it was Jarmusch is certain that it wasn’t William Shakespeare.

“It really doesn’t matter who wrote that stuff, in my opinion,” the filmmaker says. “It’s beautiful. In my opinion – along with Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain – none of them bought that Shakespeare thing. Come on, it’s ridiculous, if you do any research at all.”

Jarmusch’s love of Shakespearean theory is what led him to write in Marlowe as best friend to Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton) in his new romantic drama Only Lovers Left Alive. Like the couple, Marlowe is a vampire. Hundreds of years after his supposed death, he is living the undead life in Tangier. More curious is that, according to the history books, the Elizabethan playwright was only 29 when he was murdered in 1593, but Jarmusch cast 74-year-old John Hurt to play him.

“Because Marlowe’s death, the more I researched it, it seems totally faked,” Jarmusch says. “I don’t believe in Marlowe’s death, so another conspiracy comes to light. And Marlowe is a possibility, so in this version I’m going with the Marlowe theory.

“It’s so crazy,” he adds “You mean Shakespeare wrote all that shit and there’s not a single manuscript of a single page. Where did it go? Come on! What is this? It’s the biggest conspiracy in literary history. I find it fascinating. Someday I might make a documentary on my Marlowe theory, but I don’t know. I snuck it in here.”

Only Lovers Left Alive may not convince the world that William Shakespeare didn’t write a thing and that it was Christopher Marlowe all along, but Jarmusch has made at least one convert: John Hurt.

“He hadn’t really researched it much,” Jarmusch says. “Now he’s definitely sure that Shakespeare wrote nothing. He’s pretty sure it wasn’t DeVere, but he’s reading everything, too. It’s just fun to get his mind going. He’s like, ‘Thank you! I now know Shakespeare didn’t write a thing!’

“I love it when Adam says, ‘Well, you still got the work out there, kid.’ It’s kind of like, ‘Well, you still did your job even though no one will know you wrote it ever.’” –Pam Grady

 

Review: A role he was born to play: Jude Law in DOM HEMINGWAY

11 Friday Apr 2014

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dom hemingwayDom Hemingway begins with an uproarious monologue, an ode to the titular safecracker’s anatomy delivered with profane bravado by an actor clearly relishing his role. After nearly two decades of playing the pretty boy – Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Errol Flynn in The Aviator, Alfie’s incorrigible womanizer, etc. – Jude Law comes into his own as a character actor in Richard Shepard’s (The Matador, The Hunting Party) screwball Brit crime comedy delivering a performance that is a bawdy beauty to behold.

With 20 pounds added to his normally lean frame, terrible prosthetic teeth, a misshapen nose, horrible sideburns, a disco era wardrobe, and pugnacious gait, Law looks every inch what Dom Hemingway is supposed to be: a working-class criminal with flamboyant tastes and an even more extravagant personality. After serving 12 years in prison, he is eager to collect his best mate Dickie (the wonderfully deadpan Richard E. Grant) and head to France to collect money owed to him by crime boss Mr. Fontaine (Demian Bichir). He would also like to reconnect with his estranged daughter Evelyn (Emilia Clarke), who equates her father’s imprisonment with abandonment.

Standing in Dom’s way, whether it’s in his interactions with Mr. Fontaine and Evelyn or in his attempt to slide back into a life of crime, is Dom himself. He is an alcoholic with a volcanic temper and absolutely no filter. Even in the most favorable situation, he finds a way to give offense, vulgarities and insults tumbling out of his mouth with zero regard for how they will be received. To be sure, Dom is hilarious. He is one witty, vulgar and weirdly erudite guttersnipe, a kick to watch, but clearly his own worst enemy.

After spending the last several years directing TV shows, such as Criminal Minds and Girls, and making the documentary I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale, writer/director Shepard makes an impressive return. Dom Hemingway does not rise to the level of Brit crime classics like Get Carter or Sexy Beast, but it is a pleasure to watch. Shepard’s hilarious; raunchy dialogue; Lawrence Dorman’s gaudy production design; an ’80s soundtrack; and a wonderful supporting add up to some really big fun. It is Law, though, inhabiting the soul of this goodhearted but completely bonkers not-so-master criminal that makes Dom Hemingway such a treat. This is a role he was born to play. —Pam Grady

The CAPTAIN (AMERICA, that is) and the CONDOR

07 Monday Apr 2014

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Captain-America-The-Winter-Soldier-Captain-America-and-Alexander-PiercePlus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Robert Redford’s very presence in the blockbuster Captain America: The Winter Soldier lends truth to that 19th-century epigram, coined by writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr. Not because that august actor has spent much time among superheroes, spandex, CGI, and larger-than-life combat. In fact, Captain America is a first in a career that is now into its sixth decade. But in taking part in this mammoth entertainment Redford inadvertently calls forth memories of one of his classic ’70s movies, Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor.

At a glance, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Three Days of the Condor would appear to have little beyond Redford in common. The latter is a 1975 paranoid thriller, short on action but high in suspense as Redford plays Joseph Turner, a CIA member – not a spy, but a reader whose job it is to ferret out whatever intelligence can be gleaned from poring over books, newspapers, and magazines – who becomes a target after his entire section is killed while he’s at lunch. The stakes are higher in Captain America as the titular superhero Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) fights to save humanity from those who would enslave it in vicious battles that range from urban warfare to skirmishes in the sky against hordes of committed killers and one seemingly unstoppable Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan).

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

For all the films’ surface differences, the similarities are striking. In both, the guiding principle is “Trust no one,” advice explicitly given Rogers by his boss Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and quickly understood by Turner when his attempt to come in from the cold goes awry. The CIA, for which Turner toils, has been compromised from within, and so has SHIELD, the agency that employees Rogers.

Three Days of the Condor, adapted from James Grady’s 1974 novel Six Days of the Condor, reflects the cynicism of the Watergate era. Coming out in the aftermath of WikiLeaks’ many exposés and Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA spying, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, adapted from the Marvel comic book series, expresses this era’s distrust of institutions in a plot that ups the ante: The duplicitous faction of the CIA in Three Days of the Condor only mean to wreak havoc in part of the world, while the criminal elements in SHIELD want to take over the entire planet.

Redford’s presence ties the two films together. Joseph Turner is not the idealist that Steve Rogers is, but his honest skepticism makes him a hero for his times just as Captain America is for his. More intriguing is the part that Redford plays in Captain America, Alexander Pierce, the head of the World Security Council and a former SHIELD leader, a man as slippery as they come and a character that resembles J. Higgins (Cliff Robertson), Turner’s tricky CIA superior. Both men make a stab at projecting honesty and moral authority. Yet, it’s hard to imagine buying a used car from either one of them, let alone trusting them with your life as Rogers and Turner are asked to do. Redford’s role has changed, but the shady bosses haven’t. The more things change, the more they stay the same. —Pam Grady