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.jpg) And now the review that will get me in trouble with my sister and more or less every female I know. I hope that some day they may re-read my words and agree to disagree, but I’ll be shielding myself from their dagger-like eyes for a short time.
I’d like to preface this entire affair by quickly acknowledging that I’m in no way this film’s target demographic. I’m not female, but I do love a good romantic movie every so often. I’m not a teenager, or a middle-aged woman, so my love for Stephenie Meyer’s world is non-existent as is my love for Catherine Hardwicke’s “Twilight.”
I’m going to try very hard to separate my complete boredom of the story on-screen from my growing frustration of ‘Twilight’ fandom. I just don’t get the fandom. Despite most reader’s acknowledgment that the books are poorly written and the film isn’t very good, the fandom lives on. I guess it’s a bit like eating fast food; we know it’s not good for us, but boy is it tasty.
What’s on the screen, though, is a boring and labored love story with no spark, no life (pun-intended), and no aspects that make it even remotely interesting.
If you somehow missed out on the story arch of this film, I’ll quickly catch you up to speed. The story surrounds the not-so-subtly-named Bella Swan who has just moved to Forks, Washington after her parent’s divorce. Bella is played in the film by Kristen Stewart who resists the urge to push her hair back behind her ear for the entire movie; an acting accomplishment, indeed. Bella is a self-loathing stick-in-the-mud who is sad and lonely because she’s instantly the most popular girl in school. Every guy wants her as a prom date. Why? I can’t explain either of these phenomenon as Bella lacks any interesting character traits that might garner her friends or make her desirable. She’s boring and sulking, somehow that adds up to popularity in this film’s universe.
This is where my sister would tell me that the book tells its readers more about Bella’s mental state. This is where I would say that I didn’t see that on film, so Bella is still an uninteresting character to me.
Bella moves in, is embraced by everyone, but she doesn’t desire the lines of boys throwing themselves at her feet. She prefers the dark and mysterious Edward Cullen of the local Cullen house. Edward is the quiet type. He’s “quiet” in the “he’s going to sneak into your bedroom and watch you sleep” kind of way. He’s somewhat creepy and that makes him desirable to Bella, for some reason. So, Bella strikes up a friendship with Edward, asking him a million questions while he asks none of her. Frankly, Edward seems annoyed and completely uninterested in Bella, which would put me solidly into “Team Edward.” Eh? See what I did there?
Well, it’s not long before Bella finds out that Edward is, in fact, a vampire. This isn’t a huge deal for Bella, because she’s the textbook definition of a clingy girlfriend and finds Edward to be “beautiful” although there is a high probability that Edward could kill her. And that’s...pretty much the film. Oh, there are some bad guys thrown into the mix towards the end of the film, so there is some dramatic conflict when Edward has to save Bella, but...the movie is more or less the tale of an annoying girl meeting and uninterested vampire and...they begin dating. The end, role credits.
I feel that your enjoyment of “Twilight” hinges on how much you have invested in the vampire mythology. If you have nothing invested and fit the prerequisite female/teenager/middle-aged woman demo, then you will like the film more than someone who has, let’s say, seen “Nosferatu” twenty times and loves every second of “Interview with the Vampire.” This is for one simple reason, Stephenie Meyer (and by extension Catherine Hardwicke) has created a world where the only downside to being a vampire is that your skin sparkles in direct sunlight. That’s it. If it’s an overcast day, then you are good to go.
A vampire doesn’t even have to feed on humans and can completely suppress the desire to do so. Edward has done just this, which is the reason I found the film to be downright boring. There is never a sense that Bella is in any danger while she’s with Edward. There is no tension over the thought that Ed could snap at any moment and kill Bella. Meyer’s world makes Edward’s vampire nature easy to dismiss. He’s still the dangerous bad-boy, but not because of whom he is, but because of whom he hangs out with. The Cullen clan isn’t threatening, so it takes until the final moments of the film, where our unnamed bad-guys appear, for there to be any consequence to having vampires around. Other than that, the vampire mythology is castrated and a non-factor on Edward or Bella.
The rest is a romance that is frankly, terrible. Neither Edward nor Bella are interesting. Bella has such unwarranted low self-worth that she doesn’t realize that Edward is uninterested in her, but yet strangely stalks her everywhere she goes. There is a large canyon between Ed’s actions, seeming uninterested at the thought of Bella, and his words, that he loves her. There is nothing romantic about Edward, he’s just creepy. Bella is drawn to him in an unbelievable way when there are so many other characters in her life that are colorful and full of life (pun not-intended).
The film is boring because there are no character arcs or interesting conflicts. Each character is static and seems like background actors in better, more interesting movies. Just because a film takes place in a dreary environment doesn’t mean that the film can’t be vibrant and full of life. Director Hardwicke tries to give her film a sense of foreboding, but it comes off as disinterest in the subject matter. The cameras move this way and that with no rhyme or reason. Scenes that should feel dark and intense are shot at a cold distance, giving more attention to environment than character development. The film has no sense of urgency, making it feel more like an exercise in giving the readers something they want rather than making a film that has a competent sense of pacing and feeling.
I know I’m not the demographic for this film. I know that the books have tons of fans, but you can’t make a movie just so the fans can see what they’ve read. It still has to feel competent to a non-reader and I was totally disinterested in what was happening on screen. As with any novel adaptation, there are going to be some things lost in translation, but the resulting film has to be worthwhile to readers and non-readers alike; this film failed at that.
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