Twilight: Dead and loving it
There are fixed, unalterable laws governing married life, one of which is that the male spouse will be the one to hunt down and kill flying ipis in the bathroom. Another one is that he will have to, on occasion, accompany his wife to screenings of Twilight movies. It’s called “taking one for the team.”
Fortunately, the most recent Twilight entry, Breaking Dawn 2, promises to be the last we see of Edward and Bella and the sullen Urban Outfitters clan that is the Cullen family — forever. There is a dandy sequence at the end of this generally laughable attempt to render vampires as tiresome yuppies in which half of the cast members have their heads ripped off by the rampaging Volturi — alas, it is only a dream of what could happen, much as Ebenezer Scrooge saw an unfavorable outcome to his miserly life in A Christmas Carol.
Too bad. It would have been a hardcore ending to this otherwise drippy, cheesy franchise.
When last we saw Edward (Robert Pattinson) and his new bride Bella (Kristen Stewart), she was dying mid-childbirth while simultaneously being “turned” at the end of Breaking Dawn: Part 1 in what has to be the most nauseating, effective birth control PSA ever. I don’t think too many couples were much turned on by that squeamish ending; I vowed never to get dragged to another Twilight installment.
But guess what? You do a lot of things for the one you love. Such as becoming a vampire and enduring bad movies that give off a whiff of moldy stilton.
The first problem of Breaking Dawn: Part 2 might be that it is half a story. It is the concluding chunk of a final novel, and while that tactic worked for a gifted storyteller such as J.K. Rowling (whose last Potter book was similarly bisected for the screen), there’s not much meat left on the bone here for a Part 2. Now that Bella and Edward are officially a vampire couple, and their daughter Renesmee (pray that it doesn’t take off among baby-naming parents) is born, there’s trouble with the Volturi, a kind of senior vampire council that fears the child will be hard to handle. (My wife had to explain this to me: you see, if a child is turned into a vampire, it tends to do impetuous “acting out” things like slaughtering whole villages, which is a no-no among privacy-craving vampires.) So the battle lines are drawn between the Volturi and those protecting Renesmee. Naturally, the werewolves, including Jacob (Taylor Lautner, who wastes no time in removing his shirt), are recruited to help protect Edward and Bella’s offspring.
This is all explained in about 15 minutes, so the bulk of the movie is spent in the sala of the Cullens’ Architectural Digest-approved vampire crib, where recruited vamps stand around and pout and sulk and wait for something to happen. They look like models for a J. Grue catalogue.
The weird thing about such a stretched-out finale is that, since it’s meant almost exclusively for Twilight fans, the actors and characters aren’t expected to do much besides show up. They occupy each frame in beautifully-lit poses of self-enchantment with ever-present emo-goth music layering the soundtrack, which might be just what fans are hankering for (There’s Edward! His eyelids are drooping! For the last time!) but for casual or even unwilling viewers, it really holds little interest.
Pattinson and Stewart at least, by this time, have a bit of chemistry. The heat is off their early transgressive vampire/mortal relationship; now they just appear domesticated. They seem like a couple that has been through a lot, including the occasional on-set illicit affair, yet still manage somehow to like one another. Clearly a valuable lesson for long-term marital commitment.
Fortunately, there are also lots of scenes of the happy couple snogging and knocking da boots for fans to swoon over and sleepy male movie patrons to wake up for. Sex between vampires is truly unexplored territory in cinema.
But then it’s back to Bella saying her goodbyes to father Charlie (Billy Burke, giving the most “human” performance in the movie, no contest), and learning how to not act dead around people (we learn that vampires have to “move their shoulders” on occasion to look like their breathing). Well, you could have held a mirror up to my nose during long stretches of Breaking Dawn 2 and not seen any mist.
All of the Cullen clan have weird eyes and look vaguely Scandinavian. I expected to see some Ikea furniture lying about, but mostly the Cullen sala is walled by racks and racks of books, all of which look unopened and unread. I wondered if vampires display coffeetable books for their guests to leaf through; then again, social calls probably aren’t their thing. During slow moments when characters were mouthing dialogue in front of the bookshelves, I kept trying to scan titles, to see what vampires were interested in reading. Biochemistry textbooks and Shakespeare, from what I could gather.
Bill Condon directs and injects each scene with some exquisite National Geo footage (squirrels gathering nuts, snowflake crystals forming) to, I suppose, suggest that vampires are perfectly natural and part of nature’s way. One wonders where the Cullens get their hair meticulously coiffed and permed and their clothes tailored. Perhaps there’s a handy salon and haberdasher in the northwest pines.
All this is pretty snarky fun, but the real “life” of this undead party comes with the arrival of Volturi CEO Aro (Michael Sheen), who prances around in a Michael Jackson jacket and a similarly waxen visage for the second half of the movie. There’s a gnarly showdown in some snow-covered hills for the movie’s finale, and that’s where Sheen makes with the scenery chewing. Touching Renesmee’s tiny chest, he recoils — both in horror and some kind of frantic delight — and unleashes this unearthly girlish laugh. (I wondered if that’s what the script actually called for Sheen to do — “Aro unleashes an unearthly girlish laugh” — or if he brought this bit of wacko to the party himself.) As always, Sheen plays a political animal, one calculating enough to realize the value of counting the costs and living to fight another day, rather than getting your head popped off like a champagne cork.
And that’s a good lesson for us male spouses, too. Calculate the value of sitting through a stupefying love story that’s mostly in love with itself and its toothy characters, weighed against getting your head popped off like a champagne cork. No contest, really.
