REVIEW: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part Two (2012)

The Twilight Saga, as it has named itself, is now over and the final film remains a victim of an undue opprobrium while other, much worse franchises (there are called cash cows when critics are being sniffy, franchises when they are not) receive much less flak, if not wholly unjustified adulation in the case of the lazy and meaningless The Dark Knight Rises (incidentally, now the final film in a trilogy, despite never having been planned that way). The hatred may stem more from male viewers having little time for films decidedly not aimed at them, a failure of insight and understanding on their part. And while it remains true that the thinking man’s (or woman's) franchise would be no franchise at all, the Twilight pentalogy remains a rare female-centric series that has ideas to burn.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part Two, to give it it’s full double-colon name, begins with Bella (Kristen Stewart) waking up as a newborn vampire and finds herself very well adjusted to her new found superpowers. A plot involving the Volturi is soon to kick in, but the less explained the better. Plot, as in some of the best art cinema, is not necessarily something that the Twilight films paid all that much attention to – something that has always been grist to the critical mill even as they lauded the latest Godard or, yes, Paul Thomas Anderson.

Part Two is not the best of the series (Eclipse is), but the Bill Condon diptych comes a close second. Like Eclipse-director David Slade, Condon is not afraid to do both the softly lit slightly overdone romance sequences and the 12A boundary-stretching carnage, here with a full-on battle sequence full of head-ripping. And like Slade, he gets the balance right, tipping the scales to the favour of the romantic scenes, which are, after all, what distinguishes Twilight from all the male-centred dehumanised action spectacles. The plot is addressed often and a comically large number of new characters are introduced but the film is all too aware that it is the three leads that hold attention. In one sequence, some exposition involving traitor vampire Irina (Maggie Grace) is swiftly handled and the camera focuses in on Edward and his daughter Renesmee (played mostly by Mackenzie Foy following some dodgy CGI) playing piano. Here it is clear that Condon is aware that what Twilight does best is a kind of unpretentious romanticism unhindered by embarrassment or a need to please or, even, the knowing tongue-in-cheek sensibility through which much romance in Hollywood cinema is dealt with. This sequence also nicely recalls the moment in the first Twilight in which everything slows down to allow Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ to take an evocative and unexpected precedence. Yes, it is corny, but one of the best things about the Twilight films is that they are not afraid to be corny. You may cringe initially, but they always manage to bring you in.

That said, there is as much to laugh at in Part Two as there is to be touched by, and the film is extremely funny and wantonly bizarre – there are few, if any, less conventional franchises/cash cows at the moment. The Jacob/Renesmee stuff is awkward but can raise a few laughs. Regrettably, Taylor Lautner has little to do in this film other than a very funny scene early on between him and Charlie (Billy Burke, also underused despite often being one of the best things about the series) and the battle sequence concludes with a very good surprise/joke. As always, the film does have its dodgy moments, the line about the Loch Ness monster being a step too far into silliness. And, as with the rest of the films, Part Two suffers from what is presumably a high degree of loyalty to the books, no doubt at the demand of the fans, which gives the film quite a few obstacles to overcome. However, part of the fun of the films is that they are far from perfect but they are always risk-taking, surprising and always strike a good balance between being ridiculous and funny and moving and romantic.

As for the message, this has always be the most misunderstood part of the films and this one will no doubt be no different. Bella has always been the strongest character in the films and in this one she is able to match the other characters physically. She takes to her newfound abilities without any problems and, as always, is remarkably adept. Eclipse ended brilliantly with a speech from Bella in which she addresses what the films have been about so far – her choice and her pursuit of self-definition – a scene, which also acts as the series’ rebuttal to its many critics. Part Two has a similar scene, this time coming from Edward, in which he apologizes to Bella for constantly underestimating her. The films have all centred on the idea of Bella’s single-mindedness and the fact that she knows better than anyone what is best for her and the fact that in every film and in every situation that the narrative throws at her, other characters tell her what to do – usually using the words “Stop” or “Don’t.” However, Bella is never dissuaded and always succeeds. When Edward apologizes to Bella for misunderstanding her, it is almost as if Edward is here embodying the film’s critics who often sanctimoniously complain about the film in terms of feminism and abstinence and of being a bad influence to legions of young women (a recent article by Periwinkle Jones is equally harsh and nonsensical). Many people have misunderstood Bella and the message that the films have been making about self-determination and self-expression. If not a feminist icon, Bella is at least a good influence and there aren't very many of them for young women in mainstream cinema. And, incidentally, Bella, and the film in general, are far from asexual.

Twilight, as a whole, and Part Two is no different, is thoroughly entertaining, unpretentious and bravely romantic. The performances are all good, with Michael Sheen great fun again and the three leads still playing it with the right degree of seriousness and honesty. Far from flawless, the films are all very touching tributes to young love in all its hopes and naiveté. But the films are also committed to speaking to young women, something that no other franchise really does.

REVIEW: Liberal Arts (2012)

Liberal Arts is the new film from producer-writer-director-star Josh Radnor, a man who is so heavily involved in this film that it is impossible not to lay all of the film’s problems solely at his door. And despite being a rigidly light and breezy romantic comedy, it is full of little irritants.

Josh Radnor plays 35-year-old Jesse, a school admissions officer who knows only too well that he is stuck in a rut. Yet another relationship has ended in enmity and his job is far from what he really wants to be doing. He reads a lot as a form of escape. One of his old university tutors (Richard Jenkins) invites him back to school to talk about his professor at his retirement ceremony. While there, Jesse regresses back to student life and quickly develops a relationship with 19-year-old Zibby (since Elizabeth is too mundane), played by Elizabeth Olsen.

Radnor takes aging and knowledge as his subjects and he waxes lyrical about the importance of both, especially in terms of university. The university experience is treated with such sentimentality that Liberal Arts becomes a film hopelessly unrealistic. Everyone is there to be inspired and barely anyone drinks or acts like an idiot. Zibby is full of dumb rhetoric and is typically quirky. The unhappy outsider is recognised in the figure of Dean (John Magaro), though the dark side of the university experience is touched on only intermittently and often unconvincingly, as if the film itself is terrified of having it’s little bubble burst. The main problem with Liberal Arts is that it is such a tame and flimsy film that even an ounce of reality or common sense would threaten to destroy the whole wretchedly sensitive and inoffensive thing.

Practically anything that the film says, any point it makes, is directly contradicted by something either within the film itself or from the viewer’s own experience. Both Richard Jenkins and Josh Radnor, or should that be Professor Peter Hoberg and Jesse, have obvious problems with aging and both associate the university itself with some sort of life-preserving quality. Zibby is a young student who desperately wants to grow up and be taken seriously, although a lot of her prattle would be laughed out of most universities. In the end, Hoberg and Jesse learn the error of their ways and accept the aging is inevitable and not necessarily the end. Meanwhile, Zibby learns to slow down and act her age, encapsulated awkwardly by her receiving a gift of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. There’s even a lovely climatic scene in which Jesse and Ana (Elizabeth Reaser) talk about how they can’t wait to get old, as if the direct opposite of mourning the end of youth is an advance in itself. If this bit moves you, then what about cramps, debilitating illnesses and increasing obsolescence and irrelevance in society and the media. Basically, Jesse is trading one unrealistic view of aging with another.

Ultimately, it becomes clear that what the film really has to say is very little indeed, especially since older people, older women to be more precise, in the film are treated with outright contempt. Allison Janney plays a Romantics lecturer who has aged into a deep cynicism, which can only briefly be lifted by vampiric and unfulfilling sex with much younger people. And the film has absolutely no time for Zibby’s middle-class but fundamentally decent at heart mother just because she cannot understand her daughter’s terribly inane pop-philosophy claptrap about improvisation as a lifestyle. We are encouraged to laugh, but in the very next scene the film feels the need to explain Zibby’s mindless worldview to us in more detail so that we get it too and can, hence, be in on the joke. The film fails to recognise that if Zibby’s mother had refused to pick up the cheque for Zibby’s arty education, Zibby would not be able to talk down to her parents quite so freely.

Not an entire waste of precious and ever-decreasing time, the film does have a few moments that rise above the entirely dismissible. Zac Efron is fun in a cameo, though by the time Jesse discovers that there is wisdom behind Efron’s own brand of prattle it becomes difficult to take. The film’s fondness for classical music and reading is a nice touch since so much of Western culture nowadays celebrates witlessness and materialism, though the sequence in which Jesse gains an appreciation for classical music is oddly artless. There is a good sequence, which takes a dig at the Twilight books, though the film is not brave enough even to name them outright.

Liberal Arts is almost excessively tame, too such an extent that it does not even conclude with a genuine point. The film is devoid of any real opinions or worldview as if it is too afraid to have people disagree with it. It is ultimately a confused and meaningless film, which celebrates knowledge but begins with the quote “he who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow”, which believes in love but never shows it to be fulfilling, which recommends classical music but prefers typical indie-twangings for the score, which suggests that people who read Twilight are slumming it intellectually yet recommends potboiler nonsense Dracula as a real vampire novel presumably just because it is older. It not only does not have the courage of its convictions, it does not have any convictions.