Only Lovers Left Alive

One thing that really annoys me about Jim Jarmusch's films is how the stories are dragging out. Jarmusch is able to add such a tremendous amount of tediousness into each of his films that I always spend at least a part of it being bored. Other than this, the premise seemed very interesting, the acting performances were quite decent, and I was also intrigued by its criticism of the current state of affairs. If it hadn’t been for the sluggish pace, I would have given four stars. (08/05/2019)

Jarmusch tests the limits of the audience's perspective - you'd stake another filmmaker for the cheapest name symbolism - while building one of the best musical playlists ever. In a melancholic atmosphere, he lets two cursed men of infinite time pass who have run out of reasons to live, letting one of the year's essential viewing experiences mature as the hours tick by. 4 ½. (05/05/2014)

You see the posters, you've seen the movie. The beautifully framed shots with amazing mise-en-scene are considerably more than the whole more-or-less story with characters so impenetrable that no one even wants to penetrate them. The sad kind of movie that if it wasn't dutifully artsy, lyrical, and independent, it would have been 45 minutes shorter and at least respectable. That said, it's funny how what the film really lacks most is what's often picked on in Czech films, the lack of a dramaturg who has the balls to say to a famous, renowned director, "Hey don't you feel like this is a little past the point of mind-numbingly boring?" (24/03/2014)

At the time of its release, Jim Jarmusch’s melancholic and peculiar variation on the vampire theme was mostly tolerated by critics of the middle and older professional generations, who spoke of quirks, hipsterism and emptiness. Over the years, however, Only Lovers Left Alive has become a popular film among the younger generation, whose moods and thoughts Jarmusch appeals to with precision. It could be said that it is not Jarmusch who has aged and lost his poetics, which were valued by his current critics, but rather that they have lost the sensitivity that once led them to adore this icon of American independent film. Conversely, Jarmusch remains the same and speaks best to the same audience, which comprises romantically tattered young people. As Jarmusch himself says, genres fascinate him because they represent frames in which each artist can paint his own picture. This is exactly how he approaches vampires and creates from them the immortal (and thus polished-by-centuries) powers of his earlier characters of existentially ragged dead men and nocturnal creatures desperately longing for kindred spirits while simultaneously despising society, as well as the history and traditions of refined amalgams of devotees of world culture. Jarmusch’s vampires are cool, romantic intellectuals and artists elevated above earthly needs and devoting themselves to the beauty that is associated with that which has stood up against time and fashion, while suffering the loss of that beauty from today’s hectic world. (27/07/2019)

The film "Only Lovers Left Alive" is stylized, it has its own pace, its specific music and sound side, its specific acting, slow, tired, resigned, in which the faster moments excel, of which there are not many. The horror atmosphere is minimal, not at all, but for example, the airplane scene is very well shot, even though it logically comes across as lost according to the style. A good film, but not easily bearable. (03/09/2014)