If you happened to be at the Overlook Film Festival earlier this month, you were gifted with the rare opportunity to see Jim Jarmusch onstage twice. Once was during a live performance by Sqürl, the band he cofounded with collaborator and producer Carter Logan; the other was the tenth-anniversary screening of “Only Lovers Left Alive.” On paper, it was the perfect synthesis of art forms and artists, with Jarmusch and Logan playing songs from the “Only Lovers Left Alive” soundtrack before introing the film the following day.
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But in catching up with the two men between programs, one quickly realizes that the odds of catching both a Jim Jarmusch repertory screening and a Sqürl performance in the same weekend are surprisingly rare. “We usually decline playing at film festivals,” Jarmusch explains. “We don’t want to mix it.” Logan agrees. “It’s such a special festival, and the occasion of the anniversary of ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ being here made it a different type of things for us,” he adds.
It is hard to believe that ten years have passed since the release of “Only Lovers Left Alive.” While we may still mourn the loss of performers like John Hurt and Anton Yelchin as a work of art, Jarmusch’s film has aged to perfection. From the lead performances by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton to the philosophical ennui suffered by two undying souls, the movie speaks to the feeling of looking for something tangible in an intangible world. But the film also marked the creation of Sqürl, a partnership that has led to subsequent soundtracks for Jarmusch’s films “Paterson” and “The Dead Don’t Die.”
“There was a specific idea that Jim had about the music from the beginning,” Logan explains. “And that was to collaborate with Jozef van Wissem, an incredible lute player.” With van Wissem’s influence as a classical performer – albeit one with an ear for modern music – the idea was to have Sqürl provide a more contemporary sound, creating a tension between these two sonic worlds. In this way, two periods of music – one contemporary, one classical – would fold into each other and create a timelessness that would complement the concepts explored onscreen.
Part of the appeal is to push back on what Jarmusch describes as the “same cliched music” of Hollywood movies. For the director, composers from outside the film world bring a special perspective to movies that might otherwise fall into soundtrack tropes. “I love when people from the rock world – Trent Reznor and Nick Cave and Warren Ellis – make scores,” Jarmusch adds. “They bring something else.”
And speaking of perspective: famously, Jarmusch does not revisit his movies once they are complete – not even a title like “Only Lovers Left Alive,” which has only grown in acclaim since its initial release. But that begs the question: does he feel the same way about revisiting previous works of music as he does previous films? “It’s not as painful or difficult for me,” he admits. “In film, I put everything I can, and it takes me two to three fucking years, you know? I just don’t want to look at the films again. I don’t learn anything from them.”
But unlike a film — which takes years to complete and will only ever play the same way again — music changes. Jarmusch and Logan both speak fondly of the inherent variation in live performance, where a song may play differently on any given night depending on their mood or relationship to the music. “When you finish a film, it becomes the definitive work,” Logan explains. “The version on the record we don’t consider to be the definitive work. It’s the song. And our own interpretation of the song can change over time.” Jarmusch agrees. “They asked [Bob] Dylan in an interview, ‘Do you listen to your records?’” the filmmaker notes. “He said, ‘No, because that’s just the version I did in the studio.’”
Granted, the boundaries between live music and cinema are something Sqürl has explored in the past. In 2017, Jarmusch and Logan performed at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh in support of four silent films by 1920s filmmaker Man Ray. But don’t expect a live scoring of “Only Lovers Left Alive” anytime soon: scoring silent films is one thing, but recreating elements of film sits poorly with both filmmakers. “With the Man Ray films, it’s kind of specific because Man Ray didn’t necessarily have definitive music for these films,” Logan explains. “We’re not replacing something that he considered to be the score.”
Of course, the notion that a film like “Only Lovers Left Alive” is frozen in time and space is an area where the filmmaker and audience might disagree. Watching the film a decade after its release, you may find that your sympathies towards certain characters have shifted and evolved. Meanwhile, the near-fetishization of physical objects takes on a different feel in a world where vinyl record and hardcover novels are once more ubiquitous. When asked if or how Jarmusch accepts the evolution of his cinematic work in the hearts of his audiences, the director shrugs.
“I write the film, and then I’m talking about it two years later,” he says. “I’m not even the same person. So it’s just not my job to know what it means to anyone. And what someone thinks they think the film means, to me, is way more valuable than what I think it means.”
Given the importance Jarmusch and Logan place on the relationship between music and image, it may come as some surprise that Jarmusch’s next film may have no music at all. “The film we’re preparing now for late this year to shoot, I think may have no music,” Jarmusch notes. According to the director, the film is described as “very quiet” and “funny and sad,” and he worries that music could tip the tone too much in one direction or the other. “I may change this,” he adds. “I usually have the idea of the music while I’m writing. So it’s already telling me what’s inspiring me.”
But perhaps a little distance between the filmmaker and the band is for the best. Having spent much of his career working with musicians, Jarmusch is understandably careful about Sqürl being perceived as just another vanity project from a famous filmmaker. “I made music before I ever made a film,” the director explains. “It’s in my primitive way; I’m not a classically trained musician, obviously. But I don’t like being looked at as that’s a hobby.” No matter where Sqürl fits into future Jarmusch projects, fans can be comforted by the fact Jarmusch and Logan feel like they have nothing to prove. “What do we say in our press notes? We take ourselves semi-serious,” Jarmusch concludes with a chuckle.
