Cast: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner; Director: Chris Weitz; Producers: Wyck Godfrey; Screenwriters: Melissa Rosenberg, Stephenie Meyer; Music: Alexandre Desplat; Editor: Peter Lambert; Genre: Drama/ Fantasy/ Romance; Cinematography: Javier Aguirresarobe; Distributor: Summit Entertainment; Location: USA; Running Time: 130 mins.;Technical Assessment: 3
Moral Assessment: 3
CINEMA Rating: For viewers 14 and above
In The Twilight Saga: New Moon, gentleman vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) breaks off with his mortal sweetheart Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) as the whole clan leaves sunless Forks, Washington, to reside in Tuscany in Italy. He makes the sacrifice in order to put her out of danger—she being so hopelessly in love with a vampire—but she clings to him. So he tells her coldly instead that he’s leaving because he doesn’t want her anymore, and that he doesn’t want her because she’s not good for him. So he disappears with the rest of the Cullens.
The depressed Bella floats through school most of the year, crushed by mixed emotions of dejection, confusion and general angst. In Edward’s absence, Bella gradually finds consolation in being with the American Indian boy Jake Black (Taylor Lautner), a solicitous friend and covert admirer but who has a dark secret of his own to keep.
Partly in desperation and partly to prove her courage to herself, she dives off a seaside cliff, something that the clairvoyant Alice Cullen in Tuscany perceives to be a suicidal act. Alice returns to Forks to support Bella who readily agrees to fly with her to Italy. Meanwhile, Edward, believing Bella to be dead, would rather be killed than join the powerful Volturi vampires trying to recruit him. As he strips to expose himself to the sunlight to invite death by murder, Bella arrives and rushes to his arms. To make a long story short, the reunion climaxes in the burning issue—Bella wants forever, so she must become a vampire herself. Edward says no because to be immortal as a vampire is to be damned, and because he truly loves her, he says no again and again. As they kiss tenderly, the question burns on: to bite or not to bite.
New Moon divides moviegoers, although it seems one goes into the theater with one’s mind already made up to be turned either on or off by the Gothic romance. Playing to full houses, New Moon will satisfy its target audience—the cooing, sighing and gasping tween-agers and believers in romance of all ages, but the movie will be impaled over the barbecue pit by those predisposed to find the ridiculous in Stephanie Meyer’s brand of vampirism.
Prejudices among the audience run high. The con-camp says Pattinson with his paler-than-pale skin, lipstick-red lips and dead-pan acting is too wooden to be real; voices from the pro-side claim that’s to be expected of a century-old vampire raised at a time when good manners were in. One side cringes with disappointment at the lack of fantabulous CGI (as may be found in good disaster movies or any Harry Potter sequel); the other side goes gaga over the cool werewolves. Cynics think New Moon is corny and boring; fans think it’s the ultimate high.
But that’s the hidden attraction in New Moon—audiences are hardly aware that they are strongly emotionally involved, whether they are for or against the fiction they’re watching on the screen. The fact is, both are buying tickets to see it, so who’s the real winner here? On its opening day, it already whets the audience’s appetite for its sequel: Will Bella finally become a vampire? Will they marry? Will they have children? Will the children also be vampires? Or are vampires allowed to have sex at all? Who’ll finally emerge as winner in the end—the Cullens, the Volturi, or the werewolves who eat vampires? Reality check: Hey, guys, it’s only a movie—and the real winner is the one who has the formula to provoke or to stroke you, the paying public.
Meanwhile, where does CINEMA stand? What does it say to benefit its own audience who look to it for guidance in film appreciation? CINEMA has received nudges from devout Christians who frown upon New Moon in the same way they censure Da Vinci Code or Harry Potter, crying out, “Why promote vampirism? The bible says yadda-yadda-yadda…”
While acknowledging such protests as valid in their own right, CINEMA also goes steps further to examine the Twilight series’ phenomenal lure and sees it as a writing on the wall. What sets this romance apart from the rest? When you watch it in a theater, be sensitive to reactions around you: when do the females squeal, when do they hold their breath? Are the males quiet because they’re bored or because they’re too embarrassed to admit they are getting carried away just like the females?
The Edward character looks like a Vogue fashion model walking off the ramp but behaves like a desirable but unattainable vestal virgin. If she wanted to, the Bella persona could very well be a sought-after queen among mortals but instead she is willing to give up her very soul to be with her beloved forever and ever. What is this saying to moviegoers grown inured to movies where explicit and illicit sex has become de rigueur? What is its message to a society where wife-swapping or so-called sexually liberated celebrities blatantly change bedmates as often as they change bedsheets?
Outstanding in the Edward-Bella love story is the innocent interaction between the lovers. Lust is not the overpowering force that draws the lovers to each other—it is the tension that arises between self-satisfaction and self-denial. Love here is not an overnight affair—it is genuine caring for the loved one and the desire to give oneself to the other completely at all cost. Might it not be that deep down inside people are really longing for chastity and commitment in love relationships?
