This ongoing experiment in film writing freezes a film at 10, 40, and 70 minutes, and keeps the commentary as close to those frames as possible. This week, I examine New Moon, with notes on Twin Peaks and surrealism.
The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009, dir. Chris Weitz), with notes on Twin Peaks (1990-91, dir. David Lynch)
10 minutes:
Edward (Robert Pattinson) has been talking to Bella (Kristen Stewart) during a high school class. This frame is a flashback to the previous film (Twilight, 2008) when Bella was attacked by James (Cam Gigandet), the human-hunting vampire. He bites Bella’s wrist, but she is rescued by Edward, who sucks out the venom. During the flashback from which this frame is taken, Edward tells Bella that “I didn’t know if I’d get you in time.” The frame itself is an anarchy of dissolves, with overlapping layers of time and space; its high-pitched editing is in stark contrast to the slow, dark, long-take style of New Moon.
40 minutes:
New Moon is like Twin Peaks except with its subtext ripped out and splashed across the screen. Instead of James, from Twin Peaks, working on his motorcycle, we have Jake (Taylor Lautner) as a sort of Washington State doppelganger, except with long hair and darker, native skin (and plus, he can transform himself into a wolf, whereas James could only transform himself into a singer). During the scene from which this frame was taken, Bella watches Jake and voices-over these thoughts: “I wish I could tell you about Jake. He makes me feel better. I mean, he makes me feel alive. The hole in my chest. Well when I’m with Jake, it’s like it’s almost healed. For a while.”
Between them, the wilderness gapes in its magnificent uncharted-ness. So much of New Moon is shot outdoors, in a sort of weird zone between the oversaturated green, rain-drenched towering pines and the blank oranges and browns of open fields and meadows.
70 minutes:
This one is suitable for framing and hanging in a gallery of surrealist art. I have an idea that my mind keeps rejecting, and it is this: frames like this one are surreal, and yet are unrecognized as such because we have become accustomed to seeing them as special effects. Our thinking is path-dependent: we expect to see special effects in movies like New Moon and so we see them. But what if, instead, we choose to see them as art? Specifically, surrealist art. This is much easier to do when you stop a film like this in one of its CGI special effect sequences and look at the still as if it were a discrete unit rather than part of the narrative flow of the film.
In his Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), André Breton noted “the hate of the marvelous which rages in certain men. … Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.” And is not this frame marvelous, a momentary flash into a nightmare, in the wilderness and fairy-tale like, the raw absurdity of sheer terror about to pounce? To watch a scene like this, one frame at a time, is an extraordinarily different experience from watching at 24 frames per second.
The weakness in me wants to give you some context for the scene, in case you have not seen the film. So here: A member of the wolf pack — Paul (Alex Meraz) — attacks Bella, transforming from human to wolf in mid-air. Within seconds, Jake will also transform into a wolf to protect Bella, and there’s a nice wolf fight scene that lasts for around 30 seconds. Pure Hollywood male testosterone, sure: an over-administered culture where the sanctions against acting biologically primitive and raw are so severe. A third-grader pecks a kiss on the cheek of another third-grader and, BAM, the iron fist comes down. It has been said that there is little place for unsupervised adolescent being-ness today: all that is channeled carefully into endlessly over-scheduled, over-supervised “events” that do a woeful job of mopping up what’s left of the dwindling adolescent experience. Either that, or We’re All Adolescents Now.
But what if Bella were Laura Palmer, and Paul the wolf were Bob? Except no one could protect or save Laura Palmer: she was dead on arrival. Bob was a wolf in a man’s (father’s) body; his evil was inscrutable and struck without purpose like lightning. The difference is that the evil in the Twilight series comes from familiar stories (vampire stories, werewolf stories) that are so familiar that they have lost their power to terrify. Instead of terror, we expect variations or updates on a theme. We are the children of postmodernism. We are always already-prepared for the shock of the new, because we don’t believe in the new.
7 responses
I love your columns, Nicholas!
Thanks Sugar! I am still hunting for a not-so-pricey copy of Straight Time, with Dustin Hoffman. Looks like there is no recent DVD release, and older ones are scarce. But here’s what I did: I bought an original daybill poster for the movie for less that 10 dollars. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a poster for a movie I haven’t seen before, but I’ve become sort of obsessed with getting hold of Straight Time, and the daybill brings me one step closer. Keep up the good writing!
Thanks, Nick. That’s so cool! Let me see what I can do about getting you a copy of Straight Time. Sugar has some connections.
This is either the most interesting or the second most interesting thing I have ever read that relates the Twilight series. The lone competitor is an essay about how Mormonism influenced virtually every aspect of Meyer’s work, written by someone who clearly did not particularly like being raised in the faith.
This was absolutely brilliant. I just watched New Moon on a cross-country plane ride and was thoroughly amused and disgusted by the fuct up racial politics concerning Taylor Lautner’s body and the domestic abusing, gang of werewolves. I am also a die-hard, “Wrapped in Plastic” reading Twin Peaks fan and this rang especially true: “New Moon is like Twin Peaks except with its subtext ripped out and splashed across the screen.” I’d love to hear what Lynch thinks of the Twilight movies.
Can’t wait to see what movies you do next.
Hi Michael and Neela,
Thank you for the kind words. I’d love to read that piece on how Mormonism influenced Meyer’s writing, Michael. It would be interesting if Brian Evenson wrote it–if you haven’t read him I highly recommend him. His recent novel Last Days is excellent, as are his short story collections The Wavering Knife and Fugue State.
Neela, I hadn’t thought of the domestic abuse angle with the werewolves. But yes: there’s that creepy scene where they come into the house and are “served” by the lady in the kitchen. I did think that New Moon was a weirdly quiet film compared to so many other films like it. Lots of stretches with no over-the-top music or special effects, just talking. Like a soap opera. That’s what first reminded me of Twin Peaks: characters talking in the woods, in nature. I almost think that a different cut of New Moon, with loads of the exposition removed, would be a much more creepy, disturbing movie. Its heart is very dark, but the movie doesn’t have the courage to go there.
I agree that New Moon is, at heart, very dark. I’d have to be push come to shove to really say “Wow, that’s domestic abuse” regarding the scenes with Emily, but I think that’s because I’ve read the book, so I know what has actually happened to her. (and werewolves fursploding and clawing their significant others in the process is something that really can’t be discussed as “real” or, really, as allegory. It’s werewolves, after all.)
As someone living in the Pacific Northwest, I find the landscape to be fascinating. It’s beautiful and terrifying at once. The trees that scribe to being marvelous also hold a foreboding, if not sinister, expression to them. There is something unforgiving about the wilderness here, the fact that it is so untamed and uncontrolled, and that is part of what makes it so beautiful. There is a surrealism to that concept, regardless of werewolves attacking. Perhaps that’s why both Twin Peaks and New Moon push that feeling onto the viewer. A sense of insignificance and self-identity all at the same time. It’s very complex and awkward, but also empowering and glorious. It’s something I’ve found no where else, and I’ve been to many climates.
The idea of fear is so interesting. It’s so complex in what it can evoke. Fear is such a powerful emotion because it can move a person to do things they never anticipated of him or herself. Often I’ve thought of surrealists as dainty or neurotic, but this concept of the fear of werewolves pouncing gives me a new understanding of surrealism (which often plays with the emotion of fear).
What I find most fascinating in New Moon (the book, and somewhat the film) is Bella’s nightmares. They feature her walking through the woods, searching for something. And they always end with her realize that there is no reason to be searching, that what she is trying to find does not want to be found. She wakes up horrified every morning due to these nightmares, and there’s something beautiful in that. It’s so raw. Her loss is so raw. I think the film doesn’t portray that aspect of the book as well as it could. But the idea is surreal, so surreal. This continued exploration, every night, for something that doesn’t want to be found. Always a failure, night after night, and nothing is involved. An absence of evil is in its very essence the evil that she cannot handle. The fear that overcomes her, the reality that she must accept. Emptiness.
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