THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN - PART 1 Review
Bill Condon directs the fourth installment of the Twilight series as though it were a lush television soap opera, making for a claustrophic experience. Exquisitely photographed by Guillermo Navarro, a frequent colloborator with Guillerdo Del Toro, that makes for a rather awesome, nearly-endless collection of medium shots, close-ups, and extremely tight close-ups. Lovers of Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and/or Taylor Lautner may well die of sensory image overload before the credits roll.
The claustrophobia is in service of a story that is much more intimate and contained than the previous three films. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 does not stand alone; its structure can only be described as exceedingly clumsy for non Twi-hards. It begins with a wedding between 18-year-old human Bella Swan (Stewart) and 108-year-old vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a January to December romantic match if ever there was one.
Said wedding is captured in loving, suffocating detail -- multiple extreme close-ups of Bella's dress, Bella's hands, Bella's feet, the leaves at her feet, the dappled light cutting through the forest -- which might work if it came at the end of a epic film, but, placed at the beginning, it functions solely as fanservice. The less charitable might describe it as "padding the running time to help justify why the movie was split in two and disguise the naked cash grab," but why quibble?
The fanservice angle also explains the excessive time spent on the honeymoon, especially Bella's anxiety leading up to "doing the deed" with her husband. The de-virginizing is handled in a lushly romantic manner, i.e. grasping limbs, carefully concealed body parts, and the utmost concern for modesty. There are many references to "the danger" of the human Bella coupling with the vampire Edward, but discretion, evidently, mandates that they not be detailed in advance. On the morning after, feathers from torn pillows float down on Bella, a proud smile on her face as she surveys a broken bed, crumpled furniture, and a wrecked room.
That Edward sure can make the love!
Throughout the wedding and honeymoon sequences, director Condon embraces the humor supplied by secondary characters in the screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, who has adapted all of the films based on Stephenie Meyer's books. The comic elements are essential, because Bella, Edward, and Jacob Black (Lautner), the third, werewolf side of a romantic triangle that is completely unconvincing on screen, are all essentially humorless.
In the previous films, other elements were present to engage non die-hard viewers. I enjoyed Catherine Hardwicke's treatment of the material in Twilight, and especially liked what David Slade did in the third installment (Eclipse), neatly balancing action, drama, and occasional self-mocking humor, and tying it all up in a fast-paced package. It wasn't great art, but it was moderately-decent popcorn entertainment that pleased the fans and threw a few bones to everyone else.
With Breaking Dawn - Part 1, the niceties of making a film with narrative coherence and flow have been tossed out the window. It's maddening how little action is included; it's all prelude. And it's all presented within a very narrow framework that seeks to brook no questions. Wait, hasn't it been months since Bella accepted Edward's marriage proposal? Couldn't he prepare for even the remotest possibility that Bella might become pregnant with a child that might kill her, by, you know, buying condoms, just to be on the safe side?
The other maddening aspect is the film's problem with sex. I assume this all flows from Meyer's novels; admittedly, I barely got through the first one and have no desire to revisit her work, but even in the first one, there's a clear strain of chaste morality. And that could be a beautiful alternative, were it not fraught with so much peril for the Virgin Bella.
Edward is afraid he might hurt her, because his vampire blood has made him so much more powerful and strong than her. He consents to making love to her one time because, you know, he has to, but then when he sees evidence that he has, in fact, hurt her, he exercises restraint.
Bella, though, is like the lead character in Spike Lee's first film: She's gotta have it, and so she flounces around in teddies and falls into bed face down, arching her back right next to him. Poor Edward: what's a vampire to do? Then, of course, there's a heavy price to pay for Bella's lusty behavior and Edward's lack of self-control. And, once again, the idea of conveyed that idealized romance, in the abstract, is pure and obviously superior to all that messy physical stuff, bodily fluids, and the like.
OK, one more maddening thing, and this, again, comes from someone with no great knowledge of the mythology cobbled together by Meyer. In the first three films, much was made of the sacred treaty that was made between werewolves and vampires. As I understood it, each was to stick to their own territory. Midway through Breaking Dawn - Part 1, however, the wolves learn that Bella is pregnant -- a long story, not worth explaining, really, but it's the entire second half of the movie -- and instantly dissolve the treaty, in a meeting in which all the wolves stand around, growling, sounding like gruff versions of Scooby Doo.
So I suppose the treaty wasn't so important or sacred after all?
Billy Burke, as Bella's protective father, again provides rare sparks of humanity and humor in the movie, with an assist to Anna Kendrick, as one of Bella's high school friends, who gets to dish out a couple of one-liners, and an actor who appears in the mid-credits tag/tease, who will remain unnamed to preserve the surprise, such as it is. Ashley Greene also acquits herself well as Alice, who's become a good future-telling friend to Bella. Otherwise, the cast is a wash; though I must admit, I've developed a degree of sympathy for Taylor Lautner, who is in way over his head as an actor, alternating a grimace and a smirk as his default expressions.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 is a maddening (that word again!), slow-motion train wreck, filmed in luminous close-up after close-up, until you can barely see straight. Unless, of course, you're in an unbreakable love affair with the material, in which case: Help yourself!
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 opens wide tomorrow, probably across the known universe.
