Every couple of months or so, my fiance and I play a game called Movie Heaven & Movie Hell- in which we each pick 7 movies we’d love to watch, and 7 films we think will be terrible, then flip a coin to decide which one we’re watching. Yesterday, it was between Colin’s ‘Heaven’ choice of The Maltese Falcon and my ‘Hell’ choice of Twilight. Unfortunately, Twilight won…
Having read (and hated) half of the Mormon fanfic… I mean bestselling supernatural romance Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer, I was all geared up to hate the movie, too. And boy, was I not disappointed! But first, a brief synopsis of what can loosely be called the plot:
The story revolves around 16 year old Bella Swann (Kristen Stewart), who moves from Arizona to the rainy little town of Forks in the Pacific Northwest to live with her father.
Bella is a miserable and monosyllabic teenager, but for reasons which aren’t explained, everyone in Forks thinks she’s awesome. It’s like her pussy is made of catnip or something, and it’s just one of many unintentionally creepy things about Twilight. It’s almost reminiscent of Dogville- everyone loves Bella and are so eager to please her, right down to the waitress in the local diner, that you begin to wonder about their motives. Of course, the real reason for Bella’s inexplicable popularity is that the character is a dreadful Mary Sue.
Despite grunting her way through conversations and barely cracking a smile, Bella becomes toast of the town, quickly making friends some nice but utterly two-dimensional kids. However, these new buddies fade into the background when she claps eyes on Edward Sullen… I mean Cullen.
A smouldering and well coiffed fop in her biology class, Edward (Robert Pattinson) and his incestuous (seriously) siblings are all gorgeous, well blow-dried and appear to be wearing a too much foundation. One of them, Jasper, is particularly hilarious- what the actor clearly thinks is an expression of restraint and barely contained hunger looks more like he’s trying to poop out a Cornish game hen. But, I digress.
After being a total fuckhead to Bella for the first half of the film, Edward miraculously saves her from being crushed by a van, and thus romance blossoms between two scowling and inarticulate teenagers. In that respect, I guess Twilight is quite realistic- apart from the fact that Edward and his gel-abusing family are actually vampires. Sparkly vampires. That play baseball. But more on that later.
Yup, the whey-faced Cullens may be vampires, but I like to refer to them as Vinos- Vampires In Name Only. Their bloodlust is downplayed to the point of non-existence, and they live as a happy yuppie family in a fancy glass condo.
In fact, vampires in Twilight seem to benefit from all the perks of vampirism with none of the downsides. Edward is immortal, eternally young and handsome, strong, fast and psychic. He can also venture into daylight without spontaneously combusting, doesn’t have to drink human blood, and doesn’t have fangs. Despite his assertions to the contrary, from a supernatural perspective, there’s nothing whatsoever monstrous about Edward (except his personality, but we’ll cover that later).
As you can probably guess from above, as a vampire movie, Twilight sucks. It sucks great big hairy werewolf balls. Memo to Stephanie Meyer: being a vampire, despite the power and eternal life, is supposed to be a lonely and tortured existence, living as a parasite on the on the fringes of society that you rely on but can never be a part of. Gary Oldman in Dracula, Lina Leandersson in Let The Right One In, and Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire portray the terrible burdens of undeath with great eloquence. However, as hard as Twilight fails to be an effective vampire film, it fails in epic fashion to be romantic.
The gender politics in Twilight has been extensively critiqued by smarter and more articulate feminists than me, but it’s safe to say that to any sane viewer, male or female, Edward Cullen acts like Ted Bundy. Throughout proceedings, he’s seriously just one step away from dancing in the nip to ‘Goodbye Horses’ and keeping Bella in a well. For the first half of the movie, he’s a total dick to her, then proceed to stalk her when she’s out with friends, sneaks into her bedroom, frightens her by driving like a twat, and then finally drags her into the woods to terrify her with his true bloodsucking nature and overuse of body glitter.
Bella’s reaction to his behaviour is equally loco. When Edward tells her that he’s a killer (while they’re alone, in the dank and dripping woods), her reaction is that it doesn’t matter. Let’s say that again for the hard of thinking- she doesn’t care one bit that her boyfriend is an admitted serial killer. This is a girl whose dad is a cop, for crying out loud! It’s like she left her sense of self-preservation in Arizona, along with her self-esteem and the ability to form complete sentences. If I’d been in her shoes I’d have pepper-sprayed Edward and kicked him in his sparkly disco balls.
Anyway, having decided that she is “irrevocably” in love with her violent and humourless suitor, whatever little independence and spirit Bella has rapidly evaporates as she lets Edward control her life. This is probably intended to be romantic (gosh and golly, he’s her personal white knight!) but the reality is, again, profoundly creepy. Witness as he shoves her into cars, darkly suggests that he might kill her, and, when her life is threatened by the bad vampires who show up to crash the Cullen baseball game (lol wut) he forces her to verbally abuse her father and run away from home. All under the guise of “protecting” her.
Romantic movies, whether their endings are happy (Breakfast at Tiffany’s), bittersweet (Casablanca) or tragic (Moulin Rouge), rely on the chemistry between the leads to sizzle, and a certain zest for life. In Twilight, both are conspicuous in their absence. The washed out colour palette sucks the life out of the film more effectively than the vampires. The mood is glum, depressing and grey. Pattinson and Stewart’s romance fails to sparkle like Edward’s hairless torso, their relationship consisting of incoherent mumbling and long stares across a car park. Love is supposed to evoke joy and there is no joy whatsoever in Twilight.
From what I’ve read of the book, Catherine Hardwick’s movie is a faithful adaptation- perhaps a little too faithful. Like the novel, the film is over-long, with nothing much happening, and the script is awkward and doesn’t flow. There were also at least half a dozen characters that are completely superfluous to the story- such as Edward’s bouffant family and two out of the three evil vampires who are menacing Forks in a somewhat half-assed way.
The only positive thing I can say about this movie is it makes Washington State look gorgeous and atmospheric- fans of Twin Peaks or Alan Wake will get a little tingle in their toes at the fly-over shots of roads winding through fir trees and downtown Forks- it’s like meeting an old friend.
Although not the worst film I have ever seen, Twilight left me bored at its’ story and incredulous at its’ success. How could a movie so plodding, joyless and dull be the phenomenon it’s become? Surely it can’t all be to do with Robert Pattinson’s cheekbones? There are 40 year old women at my work have seen it at least a dozen times- I find it genuinely baffling.
If you’re looking for supernatural romance, then dig out the Buffy box set- the characters are likable, the vampires are as complex as they are monstrous, the love affair has chemistry, and the female lead doesn’t set feminism back 40 years.
Tonight’s Heaven or Hell- La Vie En Rose VERSUS Dude, Where’s My Car?
Winner: Dude, Where’s My Car?
