Stranger than Paradise (1984} Directed by Jim Jarmush

 I saw this in the cinema on release and it was as hard to pin down what to like about it as it is now. There is much to like about it but if you try and describe what that is, the film sounds like a boring mess. The story itself rambles on like the live of the characters who mange to grow on us and each other, maybe because they seem to have no idea how to relate to each other but manage to form friendships and have a pretty mundane adventure that nevertheless draws you in. 

Eva is from Budapest is visiting her cousin in New York and well, nothing much happens. She meets his best friend but never sees anything but the depressing little section of the city they live in so she goes to Cleveland which is not much different (something the characters remark on) and then to some similarly run down part of Florida together. They have no real plans and their inability to really communicate well leads to the wrong character going back to Budapest. 

The cinematography of the film, I think, is what pulls us in. The dialogue is funny, but not joke-y, we just see how absurd tiny mundane detail can be and end up having feelings for people that in any other film we wouldn't even notice. It can be hard to stop watching even though you know no one in it is really going anywhere. Well, except the one the ends up in Budapest. 

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) directed by Jim Jarmusch

 

Starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, this is a art film take on vampires. Swinton and Hiddleston are have been a couple for the last few hundred years but are currently living apart. Their characters are named Adam and Eve which I found a little annoying to be honest but there wasn’t much other religious symbolism in the film. John Hurt plays Christopher Marlowe and the script makes it clear that he wrote the Shakespeare plays and Adam was behind some of the world’s most famous poets and musicians while Eve has had her share of relations with famous historical people. This is an element that I find ridiculous in many films with vampires or any long lived characters. They always seem to know or worse, have been famous people throughout their lives. Like in stories of reincarnation, no one is ever a pig farmer, that are always Cleopatra. The unlikeliness of that just irritates me. 

This a Jarmusch film so the story is sort of light on details or structure and instead relies on how interesting you find the people in the story. I do think this works for him and it doesn’t fail him in this film either but it’s the performances of the main actors that keeps you watching. He introduced some elements that took me a while to figure out why they were important, like how the vampires wear gloves when out and about, but not all the time. Adam does seem to mopey at times but is still manages to elicit sympathy. John Hurt and Tilda Swinton are the highlight of any production in my opinion and they don’t disappoint here.