Only Lovers Left Alive

Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Tavi Chhay

Traditional Western wedding vows usually go something like: “To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.” But what if that natural ending never comes?

Do you think that if you and your lover turned into vampires, you could make it work for two centuries? Or is there someone you love so deeply that you would choose immortality, simply to stay together forever?

I recently watched “Only Lovers Left Alive,” and it’s one of the strangest and sweetest romances I’ve seen—a love story between two centuries-old vampires. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton are vampires named Adam and Eve. Hiddleston plays this brooding, hipster musician vampire with an aggressively emo side bang, and they’re both these bohemian, cultured immortals. It’s so odd, but also so perfect. A vampire rock musician feels peak 2013 millennial fantasy, and it works really well.

To lean even further into the hipsterness, they aren’t evil vampires—they don’t drain humans, they source their blood ethically. One would think that living for centuries and witnessing the atrocities the mortal world commits over and over again would lead them to harbor a deep disdain for humans—to want to kill us rather than deal with us, or, as they call us, “zombies.” Adam does hate living in a human world, so much so that he contemplates escaping the burden of immortality itself. But in Eve’s presence, he remembers why he chooses to go on. Being in love is what makes an eternity bearable.