Highlander Newspaper

Issue date: 11/24/09 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: Summit Entertainment

As she stumbles, panting, through thick underbrush at the beginning of "New Moon," Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) comes face to face with that which she fears most. No, she doesn't encounter a villainous monster (series author Stephenie Meyer has defanged or declawed most of these); instead, she sees herself grow old. Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson)-her pale, sharp-browed Adonis-also appears in the clearing, striding toward her senescent self.

This nightmare, one of many Bella has during the film, exposes, as a central theme her fear of aging, which she perceives as her romantic obsolescence. Will their awkward, mumbling love stand the test of time; or will Edward, when met with (as Yeats put it) "the sorrows of [her] changing face," turn and fly? "New Moon," an overlong mess of hormones and heartache, is not sure.

This dream serves as a presage for what awaits her in the morning: her 18th birthday. After witnessing her forage for gray hairs and rattle off a few self-deprecating remarks in the school parking lot, it's clear that age, or, more accurately, the advancement of it, weighs heavily on her mind. Now a year older than Edward looks, she struggles to avoid being reminded of it; she coyly utters "I thought we said no presents" no less than four times in the first 15 minutes. (Methinks the lady doth protest too much.)

While she is unhappy with its occasion, Bella is no doubt pleased with the attention she receives. She accepts the presents she was not expecting, and from Edward, the only person who obeyed her wishes, she demands one: a kiss. This small contradiction points to the dangerous reasoning behind her mortal fear; namely, that without her youth and beauty she would lose the attention she craves from Edward, thus surrendering a large part of how she defines herself.

And I can't say I disagree with her. Their love can't be based on much else at this point, as all that we've seen onscreen so far is a series of spoken devotions, pronouncements of love rather than the presence of it. Bella, though 18, is far from anything resembling an adult.

She is not able (nor is the audience, it seems) to differentiate between her mawkish exchanges with Edward and what she will one day, hopefully, come to understand as love. She sacrifices the actual for the imagined (an action Meyer silently and irresponsibly condones), replacing any substantial form of love-the immediacy and small moments required to connect with someone in a meaningful way-with an abstraction they jejunely refer to as "forever."

Continued...

Page 1 of 3 next >

Article Tools