The
Twilight Saga: New Moon
Directed
by Chris Weitz
Runtime:
130 min.
Catherine
Hardwicke’s feeling for teen angst and female anxiety gave Twilight (the
first film of the series based on Stephenie Meyer’s novels) immense potential.
But Chris Weitz’s sequel New Moon is full of lost potential. Harwicke’s
visual elegance via cinematographer Elliott Davis emphasized the wooded
Northwest territory as a natural wonderland where the heroine Bella’s (Kristen
Stewart) uneasy puberty emerged. Hardwicke gave Meyer’s fairy/gothic tale an
idealized representation of universal adolescent tension. Bella’s attraction to
teen vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) normalized today’s sexual
permissiveness—the cultural pressure teens feel to be sexually active—with a
concept both shrewd and authentically Bronte-esque.
But
New Moon is more franchise than inspired idea. Bella obsesses after
Edward leaves (to keep from turning her into a vampire) and her fretfulness
increases once platonic friend Jake (Taylor Lautner)—going through his own
hormonal change—declares his love and transforms into a werewolf. Weitz lacks
Hardwicke’s sensuality, her film rhythm and romanticism. He brings the obviousness
of his unintended features (About a Boy, In Good Company) and the CGI
blatancy of his dreadful fantasy film The Golden Compass. Jake’s lupine
metamorphosis is as cartoonish and dull as the latter flick’s polar bear
battle.
In
the same manner as the Harry Potter films (to which Twilight was
way superior), New Moon approaches the book series as a dull
read—dragging out story elements with no narrative economy, playing to the
target audience’s blockbuster mentality rather than respecting their romantic
delight. The Volturi subplot about a Vatican-like vampire council flips Meyer’s
Christian reticence into Interview with a Vampire-style occult cliché.
Weitz doesn’t clarify Meyer’s cosmos and can’t differentiate between dawdling
and mood-setting. Repetitious scenes of Bella-Edward, Bella-Jake endlessly
swooning and hesitating never attain emotional peak.
Bella’s
“Its killing me!” and Jake’s “You’re breaking up with me!” lack the necessary
resonance and tumescence. When Jake joins a werewolf boy-cult, Weitz doesn’t
know how to photograph the kid’s new pumped, honeyed body; he loses the
important sensual, moral undercurrent. Politically partisan critics had
complained that the series emphasized abstinence; they ignored Hardwicke’s
stifled-volcano sensuality—preferring the libertinism of last year’s abortion
fantasy 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days and the vampire nihilism of Let the
Right One In. Weitz’ ineptitude inadvertantly falls into the same
politically correct trap. Bella’s confusion about the mystery of boys,
adrenaline and testosterone matches her confusion about her soul. For Weitz,
it’s all just F/X.
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