A movie adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s story of a love that conquers all, the Twilight Saga’s newest movie “Breaking Dawn Part 1” develops the atypical relationship between vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and human Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) with a marriage and an unplanned pregnancy.
While the story’s romance is a juvenile attempt at entertainment, the complex relationships hint subtly at social commentary, as wolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) accepts hybrid baby Renesmee, and Edward and Bella overcome their “racial” differences through love. But as the movie targets its intended audience – teenage girls – much of the underlying interaction between the characters is left out to make room for the action-less shots of Edward and Bella gawking into each other’s eyes. During these scenes and even throughout the wedding and honeymoon, Bella maintains one main expression – angst. It’s such an unnatural emotion for a person whose dreams to marry and become a vampire are about to come true, and every one of the 117 minutes suffers from the awkward, uneasy tone.
What redeem the movie are the technical details and special effects. The perfect coordination of the music with the plot does, for most of the movie, reflect Bella’s anxiety, but it picks up, for example, as she learns that Jacob has come to her wedding. At any given moment, the music reveals the emotion and intensity of the scene, and it adds emphasis and a background to the characters’ conflicts, as rarely as they may be shown. The most imaginative sound effect is used to portray the mind-reading connection that the wolves have with each other. At one part of the movie, Jacob turns to wolf, and immediately a swarm of thoughts, like buzzing bees or whispering ghosts, from all the others in the pack fills the theater, and it perfectly heightens his feeling overwhelmed.
“Breaking Dawn Part 1” leaves many things unsaid and unexplored. The movie’s on the surface, but since it follows the book closely, Twilight fans may still have hope – as long as the movie is just used as a visual supplement and fans fill in the gaps from the book, it appears as though it’s missing nothing.
