Make no mistake about it, when Jim Jarmusch makes a
vampire movie, he’s not jumping on the popularity bandwagon behind “True Blood”
and the Twilight series. Those pieces
of pop culture are so far outside the realm of what Jarmusch is known for that
if he even gave them a second thought while he was writing and developing Only Lovers Left Alive, it was to check
in on the ways his movie would be a hipper, cooler, and more loath response to
soap opera lust.
Jarmusch is, if nothing else, eternally cool and hip.
This is true even though his greatest audience, the film buffs who came of age
in the late 80s and early 90s, have now reached middle age and probably don’t
have much time for indie cinema anymore. Because to watch a vampire movie made
by this craftsman whose signature style is contemplation, reservation, and
quietude followed by the inevitably dry offhand remark is to see the coolest
damn vampires the movies have ever given us.
