Review

Review Date: 20-November-11
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011)

One of the things that people commonly ridicule about the Twilight series is the fact that its vampires sparkle in sunlight. Laughable or not, this has crystallized in my mind as the defining element of the series. I lamented the lack of mythology in Twilight and New Moon, but Breaking Dawn - Part 1 shows that the problem is broader than that. The story of Bella (Kristen Stewart), the vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson), and the werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) has no lore, no back story, no significant context, not even a driblet of subtext. Appearance is all there is.

The movie opens with the wedding of Bella and Edward and the resultant heartbreak of Jacob. The first three installments led up to this moment, but the feeling of attainment or loss is minimal with characters who hooked up not by being or doing anything remarkable (the suitors' gothic abnormalities notwithstanding), but by proclaiming Prodigious Luv with simplistic dialogue and doe eyes. The nuptials are accompanied by an aggressive soundtrack which continues into the honeymoon. Like the rest of the picture, this is notable for looking like a layout from Better Homes and Gardens. It's also notable in that the groom refuses to make love to his bride after their first tumble because his undead lust bruises her delicate flesh. (Says the lady somewhat indelicately, "as a human, I can't imagine it gets better than that.")

From these inauspicious beginnings, Breaking Dawn introduces a monster fetus and a case for abortion in Bella's probable death, which might seem to entail a degree of seriousness if not actual depth. True to form, however, the movie glides over these concepts, laying them out flatly and ignoring them just as flatly. The newlyweds don't discuss the shocking turnaround of their happily ever after, they merely resort to the kind of moping that marked their courtship. Meanwhile, Jacob suffers his own kind of distress when his wolf pack decides that Bella's child must die for reasons which are, needless to say, unexplored. In one inadvertently comic scene he dons fangs and fur to challenge the alpha wolf while a voice-over provides thoughts which the growls express perfectly. (Incidentally, no amount of animalistic posturing can help Jacob now, since he's outed as the ultimate sap by the end of this flick.) More than once the audience is treated to an intimate inspection of Bella's capillaries as her child sucks the life out of her, and if this isn't the most forthright demonstration of a person's situation, I don't know what is. Like advertising jingles and baby food, Breaking Dawn - Part 1 has been stripped of complexity for easy digestion. I wonder whether supposedly poetic Edward would endorse such disregard for sophistication.

Copyright © 2011 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.