New Moon Review
-
Needless to say: spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.
Chris Weitz directed New Moon, the second installment of the Twilight saga. The first was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who has long been one of my favorite directors. She directed Thirteen, The Lords of Dogtown, and The Nativity Story. The first two of these are two of my favorite films of all time; Thirteen is the best film ever made about teenagers. The Nativity Story is not as good, but even it has the trademark Hardwicke touches that make a so-so movie by her more rewarding to watch than an accomplished film by many others: a naturalistic approach to characters and setting, plus a great visual style. Both The Nativity Story and Twilight tell the story of a supernatural occurrence happening in the real world. Mary feels like a real fourteen-year-old girl in a Palestinian village two thousand years ago.
I've only seen two other movies by Chris Weitz: About a Boy, which is a good movie, and The Golden Compass, which was a disappointing movie for me. The Golden Compass has all the parts right: great cinematography, the right actors, an engaging story. And yet it falls flat somehow. The whole is less than the sum of its parts. A couple of things about the New Moon trailers had me worried that the same thing would happen with New Moon.
The good news is that there are two things about New Moon that can't be ruined: Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson. Rob has less of an emotional range in this one (perforce), but he conveys a terrible sadness and sense of doom while still bringing some interesting line readings. I like how he will, in an emotional scene, say a line and then kind of open his mouth like he's about to say something more but then not say it---or not know what to say. I'm sure this isn't in the script ("Say line, and then pretend like you're going to say something else"). It's an original acting choice but totally natural, not like he's trying to come up with a conspicuous technique to show off or be actorly. It reminds me of one of my favorite moments in Pride & Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version) in which Darcy tells her at the end that he loves her; Matthew Macfayden starts to say the line and then the words get caught in his throat, the emotion overtaking him: "I love, I love, I love you." This kind of thing, it's what I love most in acting. It's not in the script, it's not in the direction, it's in the imagination of the actor who pulls these things out of his own resources.
These are the acting accomplishments of Rob, but the other half of the equation is the movie star side of him, which is like a supernova. The way he carries himself, the way he looks in clothes, the way he moves around Kristen---wow. He comes on screen and he is just riveting.
Kristen is just a genius. She is natural and gorgeous and so, so affecting. People still talk about her role in Into the Wild as the lonely teenager pulsing with desire for Emile Hirsch. Like Rob, she's not afraid to take her time with a line or a scene. She was maybe too gorgeous here . . . I'm not sure where they are going to take her in Breaking Dawn when she's supposed to be so beautiful that she's almost unrecognizable to her own father.
There are a couple of other actors who have supersized value-added to the series: Billy Burke as Bella's dad, Peter Facinelli as Carlisle, Taylor Lautner as Jacob, and Anna Kendrick as Bella's school friend continued to be great.
The things I didn't like about New Moon are all related to the direction. It's not a bad movie; it's a good movie. But it's not what it could have been. Here are the things I most disliked:
* The costumes and styling of the Cullens: Rob looked good, but the rest of them looked kind of . . . sad, actually. The hair was darker, the hair styles were sometimes downright bizarre, and the clothing was flat-out unattractive. Rosalie looked old, when she's supposed to look like a dewy-faced knockout. Jaspar had the strangest hairstyle I've ever seen on an actor outside of Javier Bardem's Chigurh nightmare.
And this on a man who looks quite dashing in real life:
Eclectic, pixie-like Alice seemed to be wearing some sort of a caftan in the climactic Volturi scene. (As does Edward, come to think of it.)
I kind of liked their warm coloring, and the golden eyes were arresting. But perhaps they looked too different from the last movie. It's a weird line to walk with a series, I guess. Each director has their own vision, but also has to provide continuity.
* The traditional cinematic feel of the movie: Chris Weitz said straight out that he was a different director from Catherine Hardwicke---that while she's modern and edgy, he's romantic and traditional. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but he went wayyyy too far for my taste. An easy example of this is the scene in the clocktower plaza in Italy. Bella runs into the plaza during the Festival of San Marcos, and everyone in the plaza, supposedly the townspeople, is wearing the exact same red cape. Every single one. Exactly identical. No one just wandered down to the plaza in their jeans. No one had a red cape that they bought any place other than the Big Red San Marcos Cape Emporium. My friend Debbie said it perfectly: When Bella enters the plaza, you feel like she's stumbled upon a movie set. It's visually impressive, but you feel like you're watching a movie. This sensation is a common one when one actually IS watching a movie. But that's what makes Catherine Hardwicke exceptional. Chris Weitz is just much more Victor Fleming than Catherine Hardwicke.
* Pacing and tone: These are the backbones of storytelling. You can have a great story, compelling characters, a beautiful setting; but the process of storytelling determines what kind of product emerges from these raw materials. Chris Weitz rushed things. He had a lot to get through, but the way he solved this problem was to just kind of touch on each thing that happened, so that the viewer is checking off "dumped by Edward," "looks depressed," "laughs with Jacob in garage." I never really felt the deep sense of despair after Edward left that I should have. Maybe this was a weakness on Kristen's part too. She portrays her devastation through numbness, but there's a limit to how well a zombie blankness can communicate pain. I wanted a real wail from the heart, a face distorted by grief. Likewise, when she is brought out of her grief by the sun of Jacob's love and companionship, it's just not dramatic enough. And then, boom, he's gone, utterly changed into someone unrecognizable, and all we get is a voice-over: "Alice, things are bad again. I never see Jacob." I think these sections needed to be handled differently, or at least be longer.
Other choices bugged me too. For example, at the end there's a short standoff between Jacob and Edward. Bella jumps between them and exclaims, "Can't you see that you can't hurt one another without hurting me??" Aargh. Couldn't she jump between them and say "Stop it! Both of you!" Or anything other than this trite little line. Finally she says something serious to Jacob, and he bounds off, breaking up the stand-off. But can she just watch him go? No, she has to yell, "Jacob!" as he leaves. These are small directorial or editing choices, but they built up.
Twilight did have an easier structure to work with. You start with a mystery, than comes to a climax with the revelation that Edward is a vampire. You are in stasis as Bella and Edward enjoy their companionship without complications, and then the second narrative arc takes off when the nomadic vampires arrive. New Moon's plot is a little more "wobbly": Edward leaves, and Bella's depression is a major arc. It's broken when she rekindles her friendship with Jacob. There's the mystery of his disappearing friends, the realization that she can evoke Edward's presence by acting recklessly, then the loss of Jacob's friendship, then the threat from Laurent and Victoria, etc., etc. It was a challenge that Chris Weitz didn't fully surmount.
* The Volturi: I disliked the Volturi. I've never been a big fan of them, even in the books. They are more Harry Potter/fantasy than the rest of Twilight. And Chris Weitz rendered them in the most cliched and campy way possible.
No one except Dakota Fanning was interesting looking, and no one was scary. It was just cliche after cliche. As in other scenes (like the one with Laurent in the meadow), the attacker has to have his hands in the air ready to strike the victim before someone shouts "Wait!!" (or in the case of Laurent, the wolves show up). It's this insistence on waiting till the last possible second that is so textbook, so paint-by-numbers. Laurent wouldn't even move like that. It's someone's tired old idea of what is dramatic, but it's just old and fake.
On the positive side, overall the movie was good and individual scenes were fantastic:
* The scene where Edward leaves
* The scene were Jacob phases in front of Bella after she slaps Paul
* The cliff-diving scene
* The Jacob-in-the-garage montage (I liked the camera-work)
* How Weitz conveyed the passage of time in Bella's depression (and the garage scenes again)
* Anything with Victoria; the movie made me mad all over again that Rachelle LeFevre was replaced in Eclipse
* Edward stepping into the plaza sunlight
* The opening image of a full bright moon that slowly phases black, revealing the movie title behind it
* The last seconds of the movie---genius
I Tivoed the episode of "At the Movies" where they reviewed New Moon and watched it with trepidation. But Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott gave it a very good review, and A. O. Scott was so insightful. He said, "If you don't fight this movie, you'll find a very engaging world and story." Nice. All in all, though, I'm glad that Eclipse has a different director. I hope that the studio's rush to get it out by June doesn't result in an inferior movie. I really wish they had just let Catherine Hardwicke direct them all, so that we could have four masterpieces instead of just one.
-
Needless to say: spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.
Chris Weitz directed New Moon, the second installment of the Twilight saga. The first was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who has long been one of my favorite directors. She directed Thirteen, The Lords of Dogtown, and The Nativity Story. The first two of these are two of my favorite films of all time; Thirteen is the best film ever made about teenagers. The Nativity Story is not as good, but even it has the trademark Hardwicke touches that make a so-so movie by her more rewarding to watch than an accomplished film by many others: a naturalistic approach to characters and setting, plus a great visual style. Both The Nativity Story and Twilight tell the story of a supernatural occurrence happening in the real world. Mary feels like a real fourteen-year-old girl in a Palestinian village two thousand years ago.
I've only seen two other movies by Chris Weitz: About a Boy, which is a good movie, and The Golden Compass, which was a disappointing movie for me. The Golden Compass has all the parts right: great cinematography, the right actors, an engaging story. And yet it falls flat somehow. The whole is less than the sum of its parts. A couple of things about the New Moon trailers had me worried that the same thing would happen with New Moon.
The good news is that there are two things about New Moon that can't be ruined: Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson. Rob has less of an emotional range in this one (perforce), but he conveys a terrible sadness and sense of doom while still bringing some interesting line readings. I like how he will, in an emotional scene, say a line and then kind of open his mouth like he's about to say something more but then not say it---or not know what to say. I'm sure this isn't in the script ("Say line, and then pretend like you're going to say something else"). It's an original acting choice but totally natural, not like he's trying to come up with a conspicuous technique to show off or be actorly. It reminds me of one of my favorite moments in Pride & Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version) in which Darcy tells her at the end that he loves her; Matthew Macfayden starts to say the line and then the words get caught in his throat, the emotion overtaking him: "I love, I love, I love you." This kind of thing, it's what I love most in acting. It's not in the script, it's not in the direction, it's in the imagination of the actor who pulls these things out of his own resources.
These are the acting accomplishments of Rob, but the other half of the equation is the movie star side of him, which is like a supernova. The way he carries himself, the way he looks in clothes, the way he moves around Kristen---wow. He comes on screen and he is just riveting.
Kristen is just a genius. She is natural and gorgeous and so, so affecting. People still talk about her role in Into the Wild as the lonely teenager pulsing with desire for Emile Hirsch. Like Rob, she's not afraid to take her time with a line or a scene. She was maybe too gorgeous here . . . I'm not sure where they are going to take her in Breaking Dawn when she's supposed to be so beautiful that she's almost unrecognizable to her own father.
There are a couple of other actors who have supersized value-added to the series: Billy Burke as Bella's dad, Peter Facinelli as Carlisle, Taylor Lautner as Jacob, and Anna Kendrick as Bella's school friend continued to be great.
The things I didn't like about New Moon are all related to the direction. It's not a bad movie; it's a good movie. But it's not what it could have been. Here are the things I most disliked:
* The costumes and styling of the Cullens: Rob looked good, but the rest of them looked kind of . . . sad, actually. The hair was darker, the hair styles were sometimes downright bizarre, and the clothing was flat-out unattractive. Rosalie looked old, when she's supposed to look like a dewy-faced knockout. Jaspar had the strangest hairstyle I've ever seen on an actor outside of Javier Bardem's Chigurh nightmare.
And this on a man who looks quite dashing in real life:
Eclectic, pixie-like Alice seemed to be wearing some sort of a caftan in the climactic Volturi scene. (As does Edward, come to think of it.)
I kind of liked their warm coloring, and the golden eyes were arresting. But perhaps they looked too different from the last movie. It's a weird line to walk with a series, I guess. Each director has their own vision, but also has to provide continuity.
* The traditional cinematic feel of the movie: Chris Weitz said straight out that he was a different director from Catherine Hardwicke---that while she's modern and edgy, he's romantic and traditional. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but he went wayyyy too far for my taste. An easy example of this is the scene in the clocktower plaza in Italy. Bella runs into the plaza during the Festival of San Marcos, and everyone in the plaza, supposedly the townspeople, is wearing the exact same red cape. Every single one. Exactly identical. No one just wandered down to the plaza in their jeans. No one had a red cape that they bought any place other than the Big Red San Marcos Cape Emporium. My friend Debbie said it perfectly: When Bella enters the plaza, you feel like she's stumbled upon a movie set. It's visually impressive, but you feel like you're watching a movie. This sensation is a common one when one actually IS watching a movie. But that's what makes Catherine Hardwicke exceptional. Chris Weitz is just much more Victor Fleming than Catherine Hardwicke.
* Pacing and tone: These are the backbones of storytelling. You can have a great story, compelling characters, a beautiful setting; but the process of storytelling determines what kind of product emerges from these raw materials. Chris Weitz rushed things. He had a lot to get through, but the way he solved this problem was to just kind of touch on each thing that happened, so that the viewer is checking off "dumped by Edward," "looks depressed," "laughs with Jacob in garage." I never really felt the deep sense of despair after Edward left that I should have. Maybe this was a weakness on Kristen's part too. She portrays her devastation through numbness, but there's a limit to how well a zombie blankness can communicate pain. I wanted a real wail from the heart, a face distorted by grief. Likewise, when she is brought out of her grief by the sun of Jacob's love and companionship, it's just not dramatic enough. And then, boom, he's gone, utterly changed into someone unrecognizable, and all we get is a voice-over: "Alice, things are bad again. I never see Jacob." I think these sections needed to be handled differently, or at least be longer.
Other choices bugged me too. For example, at the end there's a short standoff between Jacob and Edward. Bella jumps between them and exclaims, "Can't you see that you can't hurt one another without hurting me??" Aargh. Couldn't she jump between them and say "Stop it! Both of you!" Or anything other than this trite little line. Finally she says something serious to Jacob, and he bounds off, breaking up the stand-off. But can she just watch him go? No, she has to yell, "Jacob!" as he leaves. These are small directorial or editing choices, but they built up.
Twilight did have an easier structure to work with. You start with a mystery, than comes to a climax with the revelation that Edward is a vampire. You are in stasis as Bella and Edward enjoy their companionship without complications, and then the second narrative arc takes off when the nomadic vampires arrive. New Moon's plot is a little more "wobbly": Edward leaves, and Bella's depression is a major arc. It's broken when she rekindles her friendship with Jacob. There's the mystery of his disappearing friends, the realization that she can evoke Edward's presence by acting recklessly, then the loss of Jacob's friendship, then the threat from Laurent and Victoria, etc., etc. It was a challenge that Chris Weitz didn't fully surmount.
* The Volturi: I disliked the Volturi. I've never been a big fan of them, even in the books. They are more Harry Potter/fantasy than the rest of Twilight. And Chris Weitz rendered them in the most cliched and campy way possible.
No one except Dakota Fanning was interesting looking, and no one was scary. It was just cliche after cliche. As in other scenes (like the one with Laurent in the meadow), the attacker has to have his hands in the air ready to strike the victim before someone shouts "Wait!!" (or in the case of Laurent, the wolves show up). It's this insistence on waiting till the last possible second that is so textbook, so paint-by-numbers. Laurent wouldn't even move like that. It's someone's tired old idea of what is dramatic, but it's just old and fake.
On the positive side, overall the movie was good and individual scenes were fantastic:
* The scene where Edward leaves
* The scene were Jacob phases in front of Bella after she slaps Paul
* The cliff-diving scene
* The Jacob-in-the-garage montage (I liked the camera-work)
* How Weitz conveyed the passage of time in Bella's depression (and the garage scenes again)
* Anything with Victoria; the movie made me mad all over again that Rachelle LeFevre was replaced in Eclipse
* Edward stepping into the plaza sunlight
* The opening image of a full bright moon that slowly phases black, revealing the movie title behind it
* The last seconds of the movie---genius
I Tivoed the episode of "At the Movies" where they reviewed New Moon and watched it with trepidation. But Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott gave it a very good review, and A. O. Scott was so insightful. He said, "If you don't fight this movie, you'll find a very engaging world and story." Nice. All in all, though, I'm glad that Eclipse has a different director. I hope that the studio's rush to get it out by June doesn't result in an inferior movie. I really wish they had just let Catherine Hardwicke direct them all, so that we could have four masterpieces instead of just one.
-
posted by Anonymous at
3:19 PM
2 Comments:
I went home and looked up Ashley Greene in the news, because I thought there's no way they would put fashionable Alice in those horrible clothes unless the actress is pregnant and trying to hide it. But, no, it looks like someone just made terrible costuming choices.
It kind of boggles the mind.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home