I recall no other heroine who must choose between a vampire and a werewolf
The Twilight Saga: New Moon took more money on its opening weekend than most hit movies do in a month. It is likely to feature in the top three moneymakers of 2009, which makes it a media phenomenon - but it is not, I fear, a phenomenal film.
While it is by no means a disaster, it is more or less a decorative artefact designed to please the millions of fans who devoured the books and swooned for the first movie. Director Chris Weitz, who took over from the first film's director, Catherine Hardwicke, has done an admirable job of sticking to the book, but he had to stick rigidly to the style of kinky, soft-core eroticism that has made this tweener romance such a success.
Weitz is greatly helped by a standout performance from Kristen Stewart, who plays love-lorn heroine Bella, who is mourning the absence of Edward (Robert Pattinson), the courtly vampire who loves her passionately.
But Edward has gone away and the incredibly handsome Jacob (Taylor Lautner) steps up to be Bella's emotional support.
By doing so, he also becomes a rival for Bella's love; for the sake of those who have not read the books, it is worth mentioning that Jacob is a werewolf.
This is a first in movie history. I can recall no other heroine who must choose between a vampire and a werewolf, both of whom look like GQ models. The degree to which you enjoy the film, therefore, depends entirely on the degree to which you commit to this dark, wildly improbable fantasy.
Stewart does a remarkable job in this role. Just consider her plight: she has fallen for a vampire, a tender and caring guy, but a vampire nonetheless. He is going to live forever, but she is not.
Does she surrender herself totally and lose the human life she lives now to become a vampire herself? That is the only way she can be with Edward, but in the first part of the film she agonises about it so much that Edward leaves.
That is the first part of the problem. The second is that handsome, attentive Jacob is a member of the fierce Quileute tribe and can turn into a large, rabid wolf at a moment's notice. The main objective of his species is to safeguard humans from vampires.
To get Bella, Jacob will have to kill Edward, but if he does, will Bella still want Jacob? It is soap-opera romance generated in a house of horrors.
Given those pressures, it is impressive that Weitz is able to manage Stewart's thoughtful and intelligent performance as deftly as he does. We believe in her emotional longing for Edward, but we also understand the erotic turmoil Jacob arouses in her.
This unresolved passion makes Bella impulsive and self-destructive and, as I watched Stewart's performance, I was reminded (very briefly) of Wuthering Heights and that complex, passionate, fatal attraction between Heathcliff and Catherine. For Weitz and his cast to even generate an echo of that intense tale of drama and destiny is no mean feat.
Weitz keeps everything real and earthbound, and the film's pace is unhurried. It is a tad over two hours long, which gives the story time to unfold and allows the performances to gain a bit of heft and texture. It prevents this tale of a distracted girl, a werewolf and two kinds of vampires - some good and some evil - from degenerating into a pile of steamy kitsch.
But there are plot issues that clutter the story and there is not much that Weitz can do about them. He is hampered by the fact that Edward is absent for most of the film. He appears a few times as a faintly wavering vision whenever Bella gets into trouble, at which point he dispenses bits of sound advice, and vanishes again.
There's a lot of decorative mooning about and I was reaching a point where I wanted to throw something at the screen in the hope that it would get the plot moving again.
There is a welcome change of pace when the story zips off to Italy to meet the Volturi clan, an ancient, wicked vampire family who have none of the scruples that Edward and his bloodless family have chosen to live by. They are fabulous creatures who live in a glittering Pre-Raphaelite world that makes Dracula look like an nouveau riche upstart.
Michael Sheen has immense fun with his role as urbane but vicious patriarch, and little Dakota Fanning breaks ranks as she plays a vindictive young vampire with an insatiable appetite.
The Volturi provide a neat diversion but it is soon obvious that they also take us nowhere and we are constantly reminded that we are stuck in the second book of a four-volume novel. This story is far from over, and it is being told very slowly.
It left me feeling like a guest who is invited to a sumptuous dinner, but is served only a cocktail and hors d'oeuvre and told to come back for the main course in a few months' time.
Even by vampire standards, that is sloppy etiquette.
The fans do not mind, nor do the producers, who are raking in mounds of cash.
With the third film already complete, the next instalment is due for release for Halloween 2010, but I hope it has more substance than all this fervent style.
Loading...
Be the first to comment