The Twilight Saga: New Moon replaces Hardwicke's atmospheric Pacific Northwest melancholy with a more conventionally staged romantic drama, and its willingness to spend a significant portion of its runtime in the absence of its most commercially valuable character is a creative decision of genuine courage. Chris Weitz's 2009 sequel is not the equal of the original, but it is a more earnest and more ambitious film than its critical reception suggested, and its central emotional premise, Bella's grief at Edward's departure, is handled with enough sincerity to give the picture a dramatic core that the more action-oriented entries do not attempt.
At a Glance
Director: Chris Weitz
Runtime: 130 minutes
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Michael Sheen
Release: 2009
Critics Rating: ★★ (2/5 stars, dramatically uneven but emotionally committed)
Audience Rating: ★★★ (3/5 stars, divisive but valued for Lautner's Jacob and the Volturi's introduction)
Plot
Following a birthday accident that convinces Edward that his presence endangers Bella, he leaves Forks, plunging Bella into a months-long depression visualised through a striking time-lapse sequence. Her gradual recovery through her friendship with Jacob Black, revealed to be a werewolf, is interrupted by a misunderstanding that sends Edward to the Volturi, the vampire world's ruling council, seeking death. The introduction of the Volturi gives the saga's mythology a political dimension that the subsequent entries develop with considerable effect, and the use of the Volturi's arrival to give the saga's mythology a scale and a complexity that the more domestically focused original had not attempted is the picture's most consequential structural contribution. The screenplay's willingness to slow the saga's pace and allow Bella's grief to occupy the film's centre for an extended period is a creative decision that the franchise's more commercially cautious subsequent entries did not replicate, and it gives the picture a dramatic seriousness that its critical reception did not adequately acknowledge.
Characters
Taylor Lautner's Jacob is the film's central achievement, a character of warmth and physical presence whose friendship with Bella gives the middle section its most dramatically credible human dynamic. Lautner's physical transformation and emotional directness give Jacob a presence that makes him the saga's most immediately appealing character and the film's most consequential casting success. Michael Sheen's Aro is the most enjoyably theatrical new addition, a Volturi leader of camp menace whose scenes give the final act a comic energy that the more dramatically serious passages do not always achieve. Sheen's Aro is a performance of remarkable theatrical commitment that gives the Volturi sequences a levity entirely at odds with their dramatic function and entirely effective as entertainment. Stewart's Bella is given the most demanding arc, and her portrayal of Bella's depression and recovery is the most emotionally sustained performance in the picture, conveying the character's grief and her gradual return to engagement with the world with a physical specificity and an emotional precision that the more conventionally staged passages do not always match. The three central performances pull in different directions, and the picture is richer for the tension between them.
Meaning / Themes
The central concern is the relationship between love and identity, and the question of what remains of a person when the relationship that has defined them is removed. Bella's depression and her gradual recovery through her friendship with Jacob give the film a dramatic exploration of grief and resilience that the saga's more action-oriented entries do not attempt. The willingness to engage with the psychological reality of romantic loss with a seriousness and a specificity that the genre's more optimistic treatments do not always permit gives it a thematic dimension that its critical reception did not adequately acknowledge. The picture is also, quietly, a study in the difference between the love that defines us and the love that sustains us, and Jacob's function in Bella's recovery gives that distinction a dramatic clarity the more romantically focused entries do not achieve.
Direction
Weitz replaces Hardwicke's atmospheric visual identity with a more conventionally staged approach, a decision that gives the film a broader visual accessibility at the cost of the original's distinctive register. The months-passing sequence is the most visually inventive passage in the film, a time-lapse of Bella sitting motionless at her window as the seasons change around her that conveys her depression with a visual economy and a dramatic force that the more straightforwardly staged sequences cannot match. Alexandre Desplat's score provides a more conventionally orchestral sonic identity than Burwell's work on the original, maintaining the saga's emotional register without the atmospheric distinctiveness of the first film.
Weitz's direction is competent rather than distinctive, maintaining the saga's narrative momentum without adding anything to its visual identity. His most effective contribution is the months-passing sequence, which demonstrates a visual imagination that the more straightforwardly staged passages do not always sustain. The Volturi sequences benefit from a visual grandeur that the more domestically focused earlier passages do not attempt, and the contrast between the two registers gives the film a tonal range that its critical reception underestimated. Alexandre Desplat's score provides solid support throughout without the atmospheric distinctiveness of Burwell's work on the original.
New Moon received poor reviews on its release but was a massive commercial success, grossing over $709 million worldwide to become one of the highest-grossing films of 2009. Its commercial performance demonstrated the remarkable loyalty of the franchise's fanbase and established the Twilight saga as one of the most commercially significant franchises of its era. It is now regarded as the saga's most dramatically uneven entry, a film whose central grief narrative is more affecting than its critical reception acknowledged, and whose introduction of the Volturi gave the franchise's mythology a political and institutional dimension that the subsequent entries built on with considerable effect.
Final Verdict: The saga's most dramatically uneven and most emotionally committed entry. Lautner's Jacob is the film's central achievement, Sheen's Aro is its most theatrically committed new addition, and the months-passing sequence is the saga's most visually inventive passage. It is not the equal of the original, but it is a more earnest and more ambitious film than its critical reception suggested, and its willingness to centre grief rather than action gives it a dramatic seriousness the franchise rarely attempted again.