There’s a good chance that you already know whether or not
you’ll enjoy the new Twilight movie, the
latest in this series of movies about Bella (Kristen Stewart), the human who
falls in love with Edward (Robert Pattinson) the vampire, but kind of likes
Jacob (Taylor Lautner) the werewolf too. Mostly unfamiliar with the books by
Stephanie Meyer, I found the first film pleasantly mediocre, the second, New Moon, a bit better, and the third, Eclipse, considerably worse. My
disinterest towards the story is at an all time high. This central trio started
off with some small amount of genuine sizzle – never better than in the second
movie – but has settled into somnambulant performances. The plot had run out of
steam somewhere between the second and third films. Still, it’s the big movie
of the weekend and I figured I might as well review it, so I dutifully shuffled
off to see number four, Breaking Dawn
Part 1.
This time around, it all starts with a wedding that somehow
expects us to believe that an 18-year-old high school student should be allowed
to marry a 100-year-old vampire. Fine. I’ve fallen for some pretty odd plots in
my day, too. But this opening ceremony is drawn out beyond all reason. I didn’t
time it, but I think I sat there for a couple of days waiting for the movie to
move on to something else. At
least the wedding allows (Academy Award nominee) Anna Kendrick and Billy Burke
to walk in and bring some genuine human warmth and life to the proceedings. (I
think they retain their likability because they’re playing the closest thing to
real people in neglected supporting roles). While lots of characters we’ve
never met smile and wave, Bella and Edward drive off to start their honeymoon.
Once there, off the coast of Brazil in a mansion on a remote
island owned by Edward’s adopted vampire father figure, naturally, the happy couple
finally does something that they haven’t done in any of the previous films.
Yes, that’s right, they sit down and play chess. What did you think they’d do?
They also swim and smile and, oh yeah, they also consummate their love. This is
the inciting incident for the second and pretty much final plot point of the
film. You see, Bella gets pregnant even though her new husband told her it
would be totally fine and, besides, he knew
he couldn’t even get someone pregnant. That’s the one big lesson this stretch
of the story has to teach the discomfortingly young audience I was sitting
amongst. Always use protection, especially since vampirism is apparently not a
good form of contraception.
More so than any of the other Twilight films, Breaking Dawn
Part 1 provoked my disgust at its central premise, one of terrible gender
politics and a twisted approach to sexuality. Poor Bella has absolutely no life
beyond loving Edward, except when she thinks she might like someone else. This
film postulates that her ultimate function is as wife and mother, even if it
kills her. There’s simply no other option for a female character this weak and
flat, and that’s simply unacceptable. But, by this point, I just need to
acknowledge it and move on. This is also a movie series that includes a tribe
of youths who turn into giant dogs that stand around and think at each other.
There’s only so much you can read into it all before you start to feel a little
silly.
The director this time around is Bill Condon, who got his
start in horror, moved on to glossy prestige pictures like Dreamgirls and has kind of merged the two here, though it’s really
a worst-of-both-worlds situation. It’s slick and sick, but without the impact
each aspect could offer. He does bring the film some good stylistic touches
amidst complete and utter straight-faced serious ridiculousness. This is a
two-hour film in which nothing of interest happens for long stretches of time,
a film with its only fleeting moments of significance arising from when Condon tries
his hardest to push against the constraints of the material and expectations to
punch up the style. This is a far more colorful Twilight film than we’ve received before. It’s brighter and at
times sunnier (though I never did see a vampire sparkle). At the very least, it
looks like he woke up the cast.
Condon serves up some stylish dream sequences and a
nightmarish birthing that stays barely this side of the PG-13. For all the supernatural monsters stomping around the
series, this is the first to get this close to the horror genre. After the
opening, Melissa Rosenberg’s adaptation takes a long, dull slide into body
horror as the demonic vampire fetus tries to suck the life out of Bella. She
sips some blood, at the urging of her vampire doctor, to keep the little
monster happy and Condon lovingly regards the dark red liquid as it gets
slurped up a straw. “It tastes…good,” she says. Creepy. This all leads to the
film’s best, most effective moments: sudden, intense, spine cracking labor pains followed by a
bloody, jagged, Caesarean performed by teeth. Most of the gore is kept off-screen
but the ragged editing, blurry focus, and squishy sound effects leave little to
the imagination.
There are a few good moments, but they’re built on such
shaky foundation. Condon’s not a bad filmmaker, but he’s also not prepared to
completely subvert the material of a series that has so many fans. It would be
unreasonable to expect him to be. The plot slides into crazy territory by the
end. We’re talking who-in-their-right-mind-thought-this-up? crazy. At worst, it’s
not even laughably bad. It’s just plain bad. It’s not sick in a horror way, but
more in a total nonsense way. Of course, this is only Part 1. I can’t for the life of me guess where this is all going in
next year’s fifth and final movie of the series. It’ll either be pure,
unfiltered freaky craziness or utter boredom. Actually, judging by the previous
films, it’ll be the dull mid-point between the two.
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