This post is one big spoiler. The final film in the
series was one of the most bizarre and ludicrous movies I’ve ever seen, my
mouth was agape through many of the scenes. Here are my impressions
“I was born
to be a vampire.”
Quite a day of firsts for Bella, starlet of The
Twilight Saga, the teens as vampires (and some minority werewolves) franchise.
As you may recall from the first chapter of the last installment of the
Twilight films, newly married and preggers from the one time and only time she
had sex (apparently of any kind) with Edward, she was about to die giving birth
to the half nosferatu/half mortal baby when Edward in one of the weirdest and creepy
for all the wrong reason scenes in all
of contemporary cinema, Edward sucks his wife blood, turns her into a vampire
(the films are vague on many bits of vampire lure, such as how they become
one), so she can survive child birth. So, first day as vampire is the first day
as mom, not to mention the first ever mom of a half vampire baby. Except for a
thirst for blood, which she satiates by suppressing the urge to attack a rock
climbing mortal, instead wrestles a cougar, she enjoys the speed and strength
and heightened senses of being a vampire. Best of wall, Edward loves her.
Twilight is not the first vampire to use blood
sucking to sustain immortal youth as a metaphor for sex, but there’s a very
creepy sub-textural obsession with virginity that distinguished the first four
(or was it five, I’ve lost count) Twilights. But having drained that concept
for all its worth, and having their love consummated, Bella can now be the vampire
she was born to be and attain heightened senses and agility, but will she use
these power for? To be a mom and Edward’s beloved. If Twilight’s agenda has a
moral lesson, it’s completely retro. She’s Dawn Romney without those pesky
charitable foundations to distract her.
I liked the earlier Twilight films mainly for how seriously
they took the teenager experience. They obsessed on the teenage experience of
obsessive self absorption. Luckily a baby doesn’t complicate matters, it just
enhances the self-absorption. Career? College? Why be so mundane. What sort of
future do you want for your child? Whatever!
This Twilight is heavy on the Eros, compared to the
other films, but there is something unsettling in its antiseptic depiction of
sex. Why do we need a bedroom if we never sleep, asks Bella when she and Edward
go to the new dream cottage in the middle of the Northwest Wilderness, which
they go to without the newborn, who is being happily baby sitted by the Cullen
vampire coven. Some beds are not for sleeping, Edward replies in a Barry White
voice. What follows is a beautifully
shot commercial for Cotton Incorporated underwear and sheets, as Edward and
Bella get down to some serious love making, vanilla and romantic, without even
a smidgen of raunch, or of course, reality. What woman, in what I think was
about a week since birthing the baby, doesn’t feel all sexy and in the mood? Right…
The cottage is a modest two story European model that probably only cost a few
million and is decked out in Nordstrom. Are all Vampires rich or are they just the 1 percent? This is their separate
house – given to them by the coven, who live in another mansion in the other
part of the woods. It’s not that films are materialistic – they seem to support
the primacy of romantic love – but the obvious wealth of these characters is
taken for granted, their materialism is beside the point, which may be worse.
There’s no explanation of why these vampire are able to sustain such a lavish
lifestyle, and even the mortal friends of Bella – completely absent in this
film – all seem to be from middle class families who shield their teenage
offspring from economic realities. There are the Native American wolf-boys, but
there’s no mention of their apparent poverty is just a matter of choice…
because you know, they’re Native American werewolves. What do you mean entitlement;
wealth is just the way things are.
It’s one thing to take the teenage expiree
seriously, to cinematically make that experience universal. But to also adopt,
without question or qualm, teenage ignorance and arrogance, that’s quite
another. It’s a little sick. Although appalled I also find it appealing, even
though I fail to understand that appeal.
I like Kirsten Stewart, although I do not think she
is very talented. The role doesn’t call for a range of emotions, so the
material lacks opportunity for her to exhibit any chops she may possess. But
she has presence, is beautiful, and the rest of the ensemble is likewise
endowed with ultra-photogenic looks and limited powers of emotional expression.
The character suffers from low self-esteem – she lives only to love and be
loved by Edward – and in an obvious contradiction – she is utterly conceited. She’s
obsessed with the self she loathes, unsure of anyone who loves that self, yet
ready to attack anyone who loathes or even doubts the convictions, of that
self. It takes a man like Edward, strong enough to be chaste until marriage,
yet smart enough to attend high school geometry classes for an entire century,
to win with a woman as conflicted as Bella.
Jacob, the wolf-boy who was her chaste boyfriend for
one of the damn installments, imprinted the child upon her birth. Imprinting was
not a lycanthropy Lawrence Talbot possessed. I is some kind of genetic blood
oath, he’s sworn to protect the baby as if it is his own. The day after the
birth – vampirism really helps t he recuperation process because Bella is able
to run up the side of cliffs – Jacob first tells her, it’s not what you think
and then says, in the same scene, you know I have no control over who I
imprint. After the second line, I wondered, what does the screen writer think
Bella is thinking? That her old boyfriend is molested the new born? The dialog
in this scene was filled with unintended ickiness.
The baby is believed to be the first progeny of vamp
and mortal married sex, a hybrid. One side effect is accelerated growth. She
grows fast, faster than the Wonder Bread montage, and within three scenes is a
pre-tween. She becomes like 10 in a week (in the time of the movie, as far as I
can tell). Before this occurs, the child is photographed beautifully. I have to
repeat myself. This is one of the most beautifully filmed movies I’ve ever
seen. Everything and everyone looks perfect, especially the baby. Kind of a
difficult achievement – look at how long a history we have of child photography
– and to be noticeably superior, that’s pretty remarkable and noteworthy. Even the Sears pictures look pretty good, you
have to admit. The toddler is as breathtaking as the infant as is the pre-tween.
No matter how inane the story or low-key the acting, the Twilight films are exquisite
to look at. There’s splendor in every frame.
But back to the child. Will Bella breast feed? I’ve
been wanting an answer to that question for an entire year. Vampire guys can
still produce fertilizing sperm – enough to hit the target at first shot! – There
must be some residual human biology working for vamp gals, no? Well, no. We
never find out at least. The child is never fed. Not a Gerber’s jar in sight,
or a mussy mouth or the highchair scene with cheerios in the plastic tray. This
explains why there’s no pampers or diapers or changing scenes. No blood
drinking either. Bella learns to control her thirst, but it’s never an issue
for either the human or the vampire half of the offspring. She is never fed and
never dirties a diaper and none of the vampire teenagers seem to care a whit. Lest
you think this is some kind of characterization ploy, it is filmmaker superciliousness.
They think the audience will not care when a contrivance – of technique, not
story – is so blatant. Or is that the Twilight audience is so in on the joke
that a demand for logic is actually anathema to them?
Or, is the lack of baby food and poo part of the
sick, subtextural agenda Twilight seems intent on conveying? Yes, teenager
gals, if you just find a dreamboat like Edward to love you chastely, when you
do finally give it up under holy matrimony you will have a perfect cottage and
a pretty baby to fawn over when you are not having intercourse (by the way,
there’s no suggestion of any oral sex not to mention anything beyond
traditional intercourse, because when two young people are in love and sexually
active experimentation in pleasure never happens), and just like not having to
worry about money or a career, there’s no child rearing chores if the baby is
cute enough and wears the right clothes. Yes, all teenagers are born to be
vampires.
This being a teenager film, before the jets and the
sharks figure out how to get along, they must rumble. The rival gang here is
the Volturi, who are euro-trash
vampires. They have funny accents and do not shop for clothes at American
Eagle, going more for goth cloaks that are a cross between a hooded bathrobe
and a hooded duster coat. They hate Bella and that cute child, who they mistake
for being a vampire child. Told in flashbacks, sometime in the middle ages,
when villagers acted like Universal Horror film villagers, vampires out of
loneliness would turn a child into the undead and when the child threw a
tantrum, the thirst combined with the super strength and agility, caused
mortals to die and the Villagers began to hunt vampires. In other words,
Twilight vampires hate Let the Right One In vampires. The flashbacks only show
female vamps with their medieval vampire children, the agenda against single
motherhood being obviously telegraphed. Dakota Fanning, a bad vampire, is shown
gleefully ripping off the head of the single mom vampire then tossing the baby
into a pyre. She is under-used and when used is always the good girl, and you
can the actress is having fun enacting some popcorn pathos in a rare supporting
role.
But the child not a vampire child – a heart beats
inside her chest – she is a half and a half, albeit one who has super strength,
agility, the ability to implant thoughts in your brain and is cuter than any
child known to human kind. The Volturi do not care, but the Cullens soon travel
the world – Brazil is a hot bed for vampires, who knew – to get vamps to
witness. That’s the term, witness. Witness what? The fact the child is only
half vamp. Now the baby, at about a week or so, is able to leap into the air as
a high a mountain, so one might assume that if she does have a tantrum you may
still want to warn the villagers, but a child this cute and a mom and dad so
photogenic, that must be impossible. The hope is that with enough vampire witnesses
who see the cute baby with a beating heart, the Volturi will be convinced. The witnesses, a colorful bunch that include
an Irish Family, an American Loner, urban and rural Brazilians and two men from
Transylvania, who hate the Volturi and are more overtly gay than the merely
homoerotic Edward and Jacob.
Before
we get to the rumble, the film establishes that these vamps are also a Legion
of Super Heroes who is going to fight a Legion of Super Villains. See, these
vampires, in addition to being stronger and faster and immortal, also each one
has their own power. Bella can project force shields. Another shoots electricity,
another manipulates “the elements” – which means fire comes out of his finger,
but fire is not an element, but anyway – weaker vampire powers include origami,
folding cotton sheets into wrinkle-free squares and the uncanny ability to
select the right earrings for your perfect hair day (okay, these weren’t really
powers). One vamp has the ability to predict the future, and warns Bella in a
secret method by writing a note on a page from the Merchant of Venice. What I
liked about this bit of business were the several close-ups of the edition’s
title page – With Introduction by Harold Bloom – nice!
So
Bella makes arrangements with Jacob for him to take the imprinted one if it
looks like the fight is being lost
The
rumble is set on a snowy field and looks spectacular, the good vamps, with
their new cadre of motley freedom lovers and a pack of werewolves, face off
against the euro-trash in their Goth cloaks, which are a lot more practical
given all the CGI snow. The rumble begins, no stakes to the heart, the main
battle technique is ripping of the head. So as heads are grabbed and detached
and it looks like the Vulture. Are going to win, the half/half child jumps on
Jacob as werewolf’s back and they flee into the woods and to a more interesting
film.
Alas,
it turns out that the Dream Girl vampire (the one who can predict the future
for those not hip to the Legion of Super Heroes) was merely showing the future
to the head euro trash vamp. Telepathically. The rumble was all a hallucination.
When this was revealed, the theater audience burst out laughing at the film’s absurdity,
but also acknowledging the audacious hoodwinking.
Then to
reinforce her veracity, Dream Girl summons forth another Brazilian couple –
from a Brazilian Tribe – turns out the gal is a vampire, but he is a half and
half, a human mother being seduced by a vampire.
He can
eat both human food and drink blood; he became a full adult within seven years
and looks about 27, totally ripped in his loin cloth and head band, but is
really over a hundred years old.
The Vulture
are convinced the half and half is no threat and leave. I wondered if they
chartered a plane to the northwest together, or were they all separate tickets.
So,
this new half and half is not a vampire how? Long life, super powers, can also live
on blood. The only thing a half does differently is have a beating heart and
can enjoy human food. With the absence of diapers for the baby, I wondered if
as they mature they will gain the ability to make pee and/or poo.
The
film ends, with Edward and Bella, in each others arms in a field of wild
flowers, no baby in sight, just their eternal love. They look beautiful
together.
I
wonder if they go back to high school. That’s how they met, but the weird thing
is that Edward being a vamp was more than a century old. How many times did he
take geometry? Can you imagine? At least go to college and study the classics
or something. What will Bella do with eternity? Be with Edward, what else is
there?
The
author of the series is famously, a Mormon. Now, I am not trying to pick on
that religion. Everyone has their own beliefs and the Mormon’s are no crazier
than any other. But, some of the more famous Mormon tropes are their aversion
to premarital sex and oral sex as well as their belief that Native Americans
are some kind of lost tribe of Israel. Especially in this installment, the
writer seemed to be letting us into some weird subconscious world with obvious
references to her faith. I think obvious to us but not to her. The half half GQ model Native American male at
the end seemed a capper, but also the patriarchal nature of the vampire system,
where the men make the decisions have titular power on both the American and European
sides, but the women wield the most strength. Oh yeah, and there’s the weird
sexual inhibitions infusing the vampire erotic metaphors. A montage of close-ups
and underwear to portray sexual encounters, but to go out of your way to dispel
any PG-12 notion of non-intercourse or extended foreplay, it’s just weird. No
sex or vampirism before marriage, and single female vampires who make their own
vampire babies are to be killed and their babies slaughtered. And how come the
vampire male can still produce sperm (and apparently, attain and sustain an
erection, if though they have no beating heart or circulatory system), but only
with a human woman – a vampire woman cannot ovulate? What inspired these story
telling choices?
You don’t
have to go very deep below the surface to see the psychological phantasmagoria
boil. Twilight has a very creepy subtext. I’ve happened to have read a lot this
year about the Church of Latter Day Saints, not just the Romney coverage, but
the great Harold Bloom book, the American Religion, which deals with the subject.
I have Mormonism on the mind to some extent. I cannot escape the connections.
Do not
take this as a criticism of the faith, or the film. There is weird shit going
on in this movie and it has to come from somewhere. I am not the only one to
comment on the potential references.
Aside
from that, we still have love. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, Edward and Bella live
eternally, have a very photogenic child and get to enjoy the simple pleasures being
together in a field of wild flowers. What is the appeal of the Twilight Saga?
An idealized world of romantic love where teenage consciousness is reality?
That may be so. What I think I like the best, why I’ve followed this rather
lame bunch but pretty to look at vampires, is how they blissfully ignore their
own decadence.
Twilight: Breaking Dawn II
Scary 0
Creepy *****
Jolts *
Suspense 0
Believability 0
Total: 1.2*’s. I gave the star for Jolts
because of the beheadings during the fake rumble. They weren’t jolting really
but looked good. The creepiness though was for all the wrong reasons, but it
was creepy nonetheless. Okay, it is a terrible movie. I loved it, at the time. All the Twilight movies are like that though,
as entertainments they may be a little weird, but they are consistently good,
devoid of nutritional calories (the last is the cheesiest, a feat in and of itself) and quickly forgotten.
