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Note: the following article on time and meaning in Only Lovers Left Alive is a modified excerpt from my article “Reconfiguring the Garden of Eden: Suspended Temporality in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive”. The Eternal Return: Myth Updating In Contemporary Literature. Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics. 40.2 (2017): 123-134.

For a list of my other academic publications, see here.

Arguably one of the most pivotal moments of Only Lovers Left Alive comes when Adam, the male vampire protagonist, utters with despaired surrender that he feels as if “all the sand is at the bottom of the hourglass”.

He expresses his misery at the realization that every experience worth having has already been had and, as he believes, the future holds nothing better. Eve, his loyal partner who is much more of an optimist by nature, tells him to simply turn the hourglass over; to reset time.

In effect, the core problem of Only Lovers Left Alive is indeed related to time, particularly in the context of experience and progress: If perfection is already achieved (the archetypal paradise of the Garden of Eden), is the only way forward through loss and suffering? And, perhaps more importantly, to which extent is the human experience intrinsically connected with this grand paradox of time and progress?

Time and Meaning in Only Lovers Left Alive: the Context

The film begins with a shot of the starry sky. Soon the stars begin to revolve, as if the entire universe is spinning, and then the picture fades into a revolving record. The story is mostly set in the collapsing city of Detroit after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. This at first might appear counterintuitive in terms of the film being a metaphor of the Garden of Eden, but in actual fact there is a definite contrast between Adam’s house and everything else in the city.

His is a place of art, inventions, ingenuity; the rest of the city is displayed as a dead, decayed space. Notably, the film relies precisely on this contrast – between the “Paradise” and what is outside of it – something entirely absent from the archetypal myth, where the absence of a contrasting point of reference renders Paradise effectively meaningless.

At this point, it is productive to recall Plato’s allegory of the cave: Plato describes a group of people who have spent their whole lives chained to the wall of a cave, facing a blank wall opposite. A fire behind them projects shadows on this blank wall, causing them to construct reality in terms of the shadows. Until an individual is freed from the cave and is able to see the objects projecting the shadows, the only existing reality is the shadows.

A similar argument could be put forward for the traditional Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve must rely (and accept as truth) the information presented to them, without having the ability to compare it with a reality external to the Garden.

Perhaps not surprisingly, considering the fact that the main protagonists are vampires, the story unfolds exclusively during the nights, in the dark, a fact which augments the display of the urban environment as a derelict and gloomy place. There are few inhabited houses shown, and even fewer with electricity. Humans are painted in mostly dystopic tints, referred to as “zombies” by the philosophically and artistically savvy vampire pair.

The Eternal Now of Experience

Although there is a nominal plot, in actual fact nothing really much takes place in Only Lovers Left Alive, which mostly involves long philosophical discussions and dialectical discourses – more like a play and less like a film. Indeed, in that aspect as well Jarmusch’s production is strongly reminiscent of its archetypal myth, the Garden of Eden.

For Adam and Eve, the vampires, there is no real past – but only as a romanticized daydream – and no real future. There is only an eternal now where, in a Hegelian sense, only “being” has any kind of meaning and weight, albeit incorporeal.

However, the dialectical pull between past and future appears difficult to resolve. Eve chooses a clearly idolized eternal now; a never-ending series of present instances, where experiencing and enjoying (albeit, on a very sophisticated and mature level) becomes an existence-in-itself. Adam, disillusioned and depressed, sees death as the only sublime-like escape. For him, Eve’s eternal present appears problematic and unsatisfactory.

Much like a Baudelairian dandy figure, or “the last shimmer of the heroic in times of decadence” (Benjamin 1983, 96) Adam is appalled in realizing his temporal displacement. Having influenced great historic figures, having discoursed with the greatest names in history – being still friends with a vampire Christopher Marlowe – he is now surrounded by mediocrity and servile “zombies”.

Time and Meaning in Only Lovers Left Alive: on (non-)Endings and Free Will

The end of the narrative – though there is no real conclusion – is instigated by necessity and fait accompli, much like in the archetypal myth. The couple is forced to flee after the arrival of Eve’s unruly sister and the ensuing events, which are loosely constructed as an allegory to temptation: the rowdy young vampire persuades the couple to go out to a nightclub and intermingle with humans – the film ambiguously implies that there are also other vampires present there.

Away from Detroit and roaming the dark alleys of Tangiers, Adam and Eve are eventually compelled to make some difficult choices. They must either perish, or regress to older vampiric methods – that is, attacking people for nutrition.

The Symbolic “Expulsion from Paradise”

On the surface, the expulsion from “Paradise” seems like a disastrous outcome. Adam in particular seems lost and forlorn, having abandoned his beloved musical instruments. At the same time, however, a glimmer of hope seems to exist in this new world.

Having been exposed to the mediocrity and stupidity of “the zombies” throughout the narrative, Adam is fascinated with a young singer in Tangiers. New, local musical instruments are also discovered. The concluding act of the film is ambiguously but deliberately constructed as an in-between area which, while unsafe, dangerous, and representing loss, at the same time signals the emergence of new opportunities.

More importantly, still, for Adam it stands as a possible answer to his boredom, depression, and misery. In the light of the traditional myth of Adam and Eve, it can be argued that safety has been exchanged for free will and the potentiality for growth and achievement. To draw from Nietzsche’s thought experiment on the concept of the eternal return, the choice seems to be one favoring change and new experiences, rather than mere repetition.

Time and Meaning in Only Lovers Left Alive: a Hegelian Synthesis

The film, perhaps subtly but still unmistakably, hints at a synthetic resolution of the quagmire. By being precariously placed between life and death, and ambiguously incorporating elements of both states, Adam and Eve are offered the single factor which was absent from their prior existence: temporal evolution.

Much like in the archetypal myth, where time did not really exist until after the defining event, the “before and after” of the expulsion from Paradise, in Only Lovers Left Alive time is defined based on the very same dichotomy. As such, the concept of evolution or progress – even in its antithetical aspect of devolution and regression, respectively – can exist only within the framework of temporal succession. There is a hidden detail, however.

Although not directly exposed by the narrative, it can be assumed that such defining events in the history of the vampire couple were repetitive; that there had been prior “expulsions” from a settled way of life, a “Paradise”. As Eve in particular is revealed to be far older than Adam, who is only a few centuries old, she appears somewhat more accustomed to such great changes, a fact that perhaps explains her nonchalant talk of turning the hourglass over and resetting time.

Escaping Timelessness (and Finding Meaning)

As a result, and unlike the archetypal myth, the film suggests a temporal model that does not depart from a cyclical to enter a linear form, but rather hints at the Hegelian synthesis of these two apparently unresolvable opposites, which is none other than the spiral.

What occurs, then, is a reconfiguration of the legend of the Garden of Eden that posits a recurrence of past forms and experiences, but still leading to a forward motion of reaching new, future such forms and experiences.

The ability to escape the timelessness of the Paradise is intrinsically connected with the human experience. Rendering one’s self vulnerable to loss and suffering effectively becomes a prerequisite for evolving and experiencing, because in an unaltered environment where nothing ever changes, there can be no talk of progression.

Furthermore, in such a context the concept of ethics becomes meaningless. Umberto Eco, in his essay “The Myth of Superman”, argues that in the time span of an individual story, the mythical superhero fulfills a task and, at the end of the story, there is a clear closure; a new comic book that brings with it an entirely new story, totally disconnected from any past events.

The crucial inference is this: had the new story presented a sort of narrative evolution from a prior one, it would essentially mean that Superman “would have taken a step toward death” (Eco 1984, 114). However, the inevitable result is a situation in which reality is formulated as consisting solely of an “ever-continuing present”, and this absence of past or future as reference points fails to communicate a sense of moral stability and continuity (Eco 1984, 116).

Time and Meaning in Only Lovers Left Alive: No Progression, no Meaning

In the Paradise of Adam and Eve – in the traditional myth as well as in Jarmusch’s film – the lack of time progression signifies a lack of meaning. Adam, as a younger vampire, appears more human in his reactions and more dismayed by his own meaninglessness, as well as by the state of the world in general. His state of mind mirrors that of traditional Gothic immortals, whose inability to die is portrayed as a curse far more than as a gift.

Trapped by timelessness, by the lack of evolution and progress (or even devolution and regression), Adam is painfully aware of the absence of meaning in his journey. His existential fear is augmented by the sheer scope of his vampiric life span – which is theoretically infinite – but Only Lovers Left Alive constructs the allusion with clear focalization on the human experience.

Perhaps precisely for these reasons, that is, the limited time humans have on earth and Adam’s own immortality, the use of the term “zombie” appears so apt to describe a way of life devoid of sense of purpose. For Adam, who cannot die – but only by taking his own life – the human existence is but a waste of potential.

Note: the entire article can be found/cited as:
Angelis, Christos. “Reconfiguring the Garden of Eden: Suspended Temporality in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive”. The Eternal Return: Myth Updating In Contemporary Literature. Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics. 40.2 (2017): 123-134

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Transl. Harry Zohn. London: Verso, 1983.
Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Jarmusch, Jim. Only Lovers Left Alive. Recorded Picture Company et al. Film, 2013.