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Twilight
(2008)
Directed by
Catherine Hardwicke
Review by
Zach Saltz
Latest Vampire Flick Has Absurd Bite
Which is more tragic: the plight of the vampire,
doomed to an eternal existence in a dreary Romanian castle where the
fashion is drab and the listless dinner menu is drabber, or that of the
American teenager, ridden with raging hormones and protruding acne,
suppressing momentary happiness when angst is chic – all in pants three
sizes too small?
Twilight
represents the schizophrenic marriage of the sinister vampire and the
gloomy teenager, in a sort of
Nosferatu-meets-Mean Girls
production that, for a movie marketed to teenagers, is surprisingly
dull and formless.
There is
not a single explosion in this movie, nor is there unintelligible
wailing and screaming as an excuse for a soundtrack (do today’s teens
really want to hear Debussy’s
Clair de Lune?), and the stunning sweaty teen leads stay
surprisingly clothed throughout the entire production (then again,
removing attire three sizes too small can be a real pain, just ask Tony
Gwynn).
Indeed, the word
vampire is not mentioned for
the first hour of the motion picture; it is as though in trying to build
suspense of the great unknown terror, a la
Jaws, the filmmakers here are
merely content to present a rudimentary, albeit fluffy courtship between
the 17-year-old new girl and town and her 108-year-old love interest
(don’t worry, he has been preserved and undead for a good 91 of those
years).
First, a confession: I have never read any of the
much-heralded books in the series by Stephanie Meyer.
This is because (1) I had not heard of the
Twilight
series until roughly
three weeks ago because (1a) I actually do live in a cave, and (2) I am
not a 14-year-old girl.
I
am also not a particular fan of vampire fiction (or non-fiction, for
that matter), but I will hand it to Miss Meyer: She has, in effect, done
what Dan Brown did with
The Da
Vinci Code and created an entire genre unto itself – emo teen
vampire romance, or ETVR for short.
I spent most of my time in high school making fun of these dweebs
without realizing that, had my skin been whiter and my brain been
bigger, I could have capitalized the propensity they had to obsess on
things like
Twilight and
spend hoards of money to maintain the ETVR lifestyle.
Those kids must have had wealthy parents; after all, who has that
kind of money to wear new leather trench coats and low slung drainpipes
each week?
The film stars Kirsten Stewart as Bella Swan, who
has the name either a ballerina or a low rent Grand Ole Opry belle from
Nashville.
She is emo – so
emo that she lives in Phoenix and remains as pale as snow.
She drives a nasty old truck given to her by her distant father
after she finds herself in Forks, Washington (the dinner metaphor is not
funny).
She meets a lot of
weird friends, including social guru Eric Yorkie, a cross between Ben
Fong-Torres from
Almost Famous
and Kojack.
But the
25-year-old-actor-playing-a-high-schooler that catches her eye is dreamy
Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), who resides with the most incestuous
family of vampires this side of
The Hotel New Hampshire.
He drives a sweet two-door Volvo (the only one of its kind made
after 1974) and looks like he’s in severe pain whenever he talks to her.
It’s not that he’s trying to build up the confidence to ask her
to the prom – he has to resist the temptation to suck her intoxicating
blood.
Now what is so appealing about this girl’s blood?
It couldn’t be that great – she doesn’t really exercise or get
around much, and based on the color of her skin, her blood doesn’t get
around much inside her either.
You see, blood is just the subtext: the movie is really talking
about sex, and how high school males must resist the temptation to
engage in it, no matter how irresistible the unsucked “blood” of a high
school girl may be.
Here is
some illustrative sample dialogue:
Edward: I could always
make you dance.
Bella: I’m not scared
of you.
Edward: Well you
really shouldn’t have said that.
Sex – I mean, sucking blood is the enemy here,
which is why Edward and his family have taken to only devouring animals
rather than people.
This
makes them “vegetarians” rather than “carnivores” though vegetarians
don’t eat animals and carnivores don’t eat humans.
But no matter – the movie’s sound ecological message rings true,
and as in
Wall E, the film’s
promotion of environmental consciousness is so embedded in the story,
it’s barely noticeable (not that it should be for heaven’s sake).
Twilight
has a couple of good scenes.
When Edward takes Bella over for dinner at his place, it’s a
funny sort-of reversal of
Guess
of Who’s Coming to Dinner (perhaps retitled
Guess Who’s Going to Be Dinner).
And I was particularly fond of the good vampire vs. bad vampire
baseball game (reminiscent of the “Take me Out to the Holodeck” episode
of Deep Space Nine when Sisko
and the crew square off on the diamond against the Vulcans).
But overall, the picture was messy, had too many characters, and
the scenes that were supposed to be chalk full of unadulterated teen
lust came off as a bad rip off of Anne Rice and the latest Abercrombie
and Fitch ad.
Twilight
will appeal to those
who expect a good, faithful treatment of the book, but for those seeking
an intelligent film dealing with the widespread calamity of teen
vampirity, one may wish to remain undead for another few centuries.
Rating:
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