Review of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011) by Arifeucht — 25 Nov 2011

In this nearly two hour installment of internationally best-selling series Twilight, the audience is faced with a bewildering array of plot thickenings, ever-deepening conflicts which threaten the very livelihood of the parties involved, and plenty of angst-ridden scenes of tanned, shirtless, six-packed males running through pouring rain as they morph into werewolves, scenes so embarrassingly prevalent in this series that it's almost become cliché to mention them in a review. On a visceral level, the camerawork retains several flaws: there are countless long shots which contain nothing that will sustain the fickle interest of even the most dedicated Twilight fans. Scattered throughout the length of the film are several shots of actors visibly glaring into the camera, as if admit to the whole fake and kitsch air the film carries (see scene with robotic dubbed-over werewolf voices, reminiscent of dalogue in Trasformers) .Now I generally can take a gander as to why a certain scene was filmed in a certain way, though I am at a total loss as to understand how an close-up extended shot of our protagonist, then relatively unaffected, against the backdrop of a painfully faux wallpaper which resembles a bookcase either to augment emotional complexity or visual interest. Not surprisingly, the same holds true for the selection of music, with midi-file violins screeching in unison in boring tonal patterns at even the minutest emotional climax and, perhaps most kvetch-worthy, the selection of indie sounding songs that loom over characters as they stand and blankly stare, attempting to look pensive. But chances are if you schlepped yourself to the theatre to view Twilight as a true drama and not as an accidental comedy, then emotional complexity, visual interest, or music selection likely bear no importance to you. However, it is not the grave lack of aesthetic appeal, but the grave lack of mentally engaging substance which is most alarming. Perhaps it is naïve of me to downplay the pimply preteen paranormal melodrama that is Twilight for its lack of intellectually demanding content, though even the shoddiest and most sloppily thrown together stories inevitably contain some message: Twilight is no exception. Throughout the film, there is a painfully obvious tendency to objectify women, painting them merely as passive recipients of violently destructive, even life-endangering masculine elements which necessarily accompany their love. Not to mention to horrifically blood-drenched scene of Bella's delivery, a gory slew of images sure to keep all virgins virgin and forever brutalize the feminine element in the creation of life. This anti-feminist element stands in stark contrast to the current trend in commercial films, which is undoubtedly one of neo-feminism ; take, for instance, the capable female protagonist of Black Swan, attempting to balance a professional career with a distressing personal life, an endeavor which her male instructor has already accomplished. Now some might suggest that this rampant anti-feminism is an unintended byproduct Meyer's religiosity, though, in her defense, such weighty and divisive social issues would not be consciously selected by such a, as Stephen King labels her, "bad" writer. So the tumultuous first part of the last installment of the Twilight series proves no different than the rest: a swarm of hapless humanoid creatures attempting to come to grips with emotional constructs by hesitantly reciting lines which sound like they were pulled straight out of a cancelled midday soap opera, characters so shallow and undeveloped that even the most compassionate individual struggles to sympathize with them, a plot so unbelievable, yet so predictable, in whole, a chaotic mishmash of events so unrelatable, that the only real, or living, thing contained within them seems to be the few ounces of blood which drip from the victims' necks or stagnate in Bella's styrofoam cup. So it is courtesy of Twilight that there now exists a "Teen Paranormal Romance" section in your local bookstore: three long shelves housing unfortunately copious amounts of Twilight paraphernalia, and even more unfortunately, a seemingly infinite amount of desperate copycats, some going so far as to steal the plain-black, single image cover layout and spindly font headings from Twilight, perhaps condescendingly assuming that preteens might just be illiterate enough to seek out books solely by their covers. And who, living in such a society of culture whores, can honestly blame them? . Now, despite the invective tone of this review, there remains one serious item, I must confess, which one can squeeze out of Breaking Dawn, an item conveniently revealed to us in Bella Swan's initials: "Stay away, intelligent moviegoers! This franchise is nothing but bullshit"!

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