«Only Lovers Left Alive»: Music in the Face of Disillusionment

Le Regard Libre No. 74 – Ivan Garcia

File «The figure of the musician in cinema».»

He is a vampire musician. She is a vampire bookworm. Their main concern? Getting fresh blood. In *Only Lovers Left Alive*, a couple of millennial blood-drinkers fall in love against the backdrop of a world in decline. And all of this, set to music, no less. A far-fetched feature film that, in the end, isn’t very funky.

From *Only Lovers Left Alive*, directed by the famous Jim Jarmusch, I only remember a few rather vague details. The plot in a nutshell: Adam, a sort of vampire version of Jack White, is a musician who lives in seclusion from the world in his Detroit home. He collects old guitars and is depressed. In fact, he refuses almost any interaction with the outside world, calls humans «zombies,» and uses a young man, Ian, as a courier to bring him—