Breaking Dawn, Pt. 1

I normally enjoy doing background research for Recess stories. Reviewing an album gives you a chance to engage meaningfully with a band’s catalog. The same goes for film reviews—in order to contextualize your opinion, you familiarize yourself with the work of the director and the actors. It’s at these times, when I’m discovering a new artist for the sake of a story, that I relish my work. Researching The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Pt. I was not one of these times.

Perhaps, I thought before I started, this series might surprise me. After all, the films together have earned over $2 billion and the books have sold nearly 150 million copies. A franchise couldn’t possibly achieve such staggering success without possessing a few redeeming qualities.

Could it?

With a perverse curiosity I checked out the first three films from the library, borrowed the novels from a friend’s younger sister, and hurled myself headlong into the world of Bella, Edward and Jacob. What I found was, well, putrid and tedious. I will admit that I only read the first half of Twilight and the first half of Breaking Dawn. Yet even this much was excruciating. Though I am far from erudite, I know good writing when I see it. So when faced with such analogies as “the smell hit me like a rotten tomato to the face” and chapter titles like “The Two Things at the Very Top of My Things-I-Never-Want-to-Do List,” I don’t know whether to weep for the pre-teen generation or thank my stars they can still read. And the film adaptations are little more than expensive soap operas that make the fatal mistake of buying into their own gravity. It’s tabloid cinema, not filmmaking.

For the three people who don’t know the story thus far: Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), an angst-ridden high school girl from Phoenix, moves in with her dad in the remote town of Forks, Washington, and falls in love with a gorgeous vampire named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Unfortunately, Bella’s best friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) is also in love with her, and is a member of the native werewolf tribe, the Quileute. There is an uneasy truce between the Cullens and the Quileute, but Bella and Edward’s relationship threatens to reignite their centuries-old feud. Also, and most importantly, Bella and Edward can’t have sex because Edward was born in the Victorian era and has antiquated notions of chastity. So the two star-cross’d lovers decide to consecrate their eternal teenage love and tie the knot. Which brings us to Breaking Dawn, Pt. I.

The film opens with a lavish wedding ceremony. The supporting cast is woven together in a surprisingly charming toast montage—Billy Burke and the woefully underutilized Anna Kendrick as Bella’s father Charlie and her friend Jessica, respectively, steal the scene with their speeches. Sadly, though, this is where the fun ends, as the story dissolves quickly into melodrama. Jacob makes a surprise appearance at the reception but throws a fit when he learns that Bella intends to sleep with her husband on their honeymoon. The couple then embark on said honeymoon, on a private island off the coast of Brazil, and finally engage in the act it’s taken three installments to reach—again, and again, and again. Ah, but this is not the euphoric catharsis it ought to be. Wracked with guilt over his lack of caution—he mangles the bedframe and leaves Bella covered in bruises—Edward succumbs to self-loathing and spoils the occasion. What’s more, they find to their horror that Bella is pregnant, and the baby is not entirely human. It is growing too rapidly and is literally draining the life from her, so they rush home to Edward’s family for treatment. When the Quileute learn of the pregnancy, they decide they must break the treaty and eliminate Bella and her unholy offspring. The Cullens are now forced to defend Edward’s dying wife from an onslaught of werewolves. Bella eventually gives birth, but only survives due to Edward’s venom; at the conclusion of the film, she is a vampire.

Director Bill Condon has demonstrated in past films like 2004’s Kinsey and 1998’s Gods & Monsters that he is capable of subtlety. In Breaking Dawn, Pt. I, however, he foregoes any tendency toward restraint. The sweeping score saturates virtually every scene, lending a comic intensity to trivial events; the sex scenes are as salacious as the PG-13 rating will allow; and the birth of Bella’s daughter is a frenzied, bloody mess, replete with an incomprehensible impromptu C-section that far exceeds the novel in detail. In attempting to capture the intensity of the crucial scene, Condon mistakes chaos for urgency. He also mishandles the pacing of the story at large, dwelling endlessly on the honeymoon fleshcapade while racing through key plot turns like Jacob’s ascension to Alpha werewolf. The film jerks and stalls like a new driver learning a stick shift.

The acting from the three stars is decidedly one-note, consisting mostly of furrowed brows and choked anguish. But then, it’s not my impression that anyone sees these films for the performances. What Stewart, Pattinson and Lautner do well is look toned and beautiful, providing sumptuous visual treats for their young, largely female audience.