Twilight Review

The film ‘Twilight’, directed by Catherine Hardwicke and based on the best selling novel ‘Twilight’ by Stephanie Meyer, is a romantic-fantasy, which stars Bella Swan played by Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen. In the film Isabella Swan (protagonist) goes to live with her Dad, Charlie, in the town of Forks and the story follows her building a relationship with Edward Cullen, a vampire. ‘Twilight’ maintains the conventions of a love story but with a dangerous twist. On the opening day it made $35.7 million and has made $384,997,808 worldwide in box office sales. The film won 19 awards and was nominated for 8 awards.

The actors cast were unknown. Kristen Stewart is not your stereotypical choice. She breaks conventions; she plays Bella as an independent character, shown as an everyday school girl; this helps the audience to connect with her as she is shown to be a ‘normal girl’. Billy Burke plays Bella’s Dad; this is presented in a very stereotypical American dad way with him being the chief of Police. Billy Burke portrays the character in a comical way which adds some humour to the serious plot. The cast of ‘Twilight’ is small and all have been chosen because of the way they look and the way they convey their characters. Alice Cullen is acted by Ashley Greene; this is a hard character to portray because Alice can see the future but I belive that she shows her in a way that the audience can uderstand. Bella’s friends are shown in a down to earth way and are believable. This is important to have because the other characters are vampires and the film needs this balance to make it believable.

Hardwicke uses the full range of camerawork for the audience to see the relationship between the characters, to build tensions and give the audience an insight into how the characters are feeling. They use cu (close ups) to show the facial expressions of the characters, this tells the audience what the character is thinking. They use a lot of mid shot and two person shot in order for the audience see more of the character and with a two person shot the audience can see two of the characters; this helps to show the relationship between them. Showing the relationship is important to the story and theme of the film as it is about love. In contrast to the ballet studio the audience needs to see the hate that Edward has for James. Clever camera techniques give us a bird’s eye view in the meadow scene to create a dreamy feel. They use an extreme cu to show the change in Edwards’s eyes reminding the audience that his eyes have changed colour; point of view helps the audience to understand the characters as they can see what they are and feel more connected with what’s happening. Other shots that help the audience to understand what is happening with the characters, the locations and what is going on in the story these would be shots like long shot and location shot these help the audience to see where the characters are and what’s happening in the background such as in the scene when Mike is asking her to the prom. Also shots such as an over shoulder shot help the audience feel more involved with what’s happening and connected to the characters. They also use camera movement; pan, tilt, zoom, tracking and following this movement helps the audience feel like they are part of the action. The vampires had super speed, the tracking and following helped to create this effect. They used low angle on Edward and the other vampires, this shows how they were more powerful and how Bella looked up to them. High angle was used a lot on Bella at the beginning to show how she was weaker then Edward and at risk by being with him.

Catherine Hardwicke uses a more realist visual style in the film. Most of the lighting is ambient lighting and low key lighting was used to create shadows, the low key helping the film come a across in more of a spooky way and giving depth to the faces of the vampires to give them more of a powerful and angry feel in the fight scene. By using ambient and low key lighting it helps convey to the audience the difference between the two different worlds. The film uses no bright and symbolic lighting this helps to keep it realistic. The difference is also shown in the colours that the characters wear. With the vampires wearing blues, whites and greys these pale colours break the conventions of vampires and connotes something mysterious about them. Where the humans wear purple and brown these colours are dull showing them to be normal. These colours are also shown in the locations for the film; in the Cullen house the colours are ambient and pale where as the human locations use dull colours. This difference helps the audience know the change in the setting. Though the vampires themselves break conventions the location in which the film is set follows conventions for a vampire film. This is because of the weather: dark and raining this means that they could not film on locations when the weather was good; making the mise-en-scene work around the weather. The film is done in a Brecht way, with the soliloquy put in to remind the audience that they are watching a film. This technique relates back to the book, as the book is narrated through the first person, Bella’s, view on what’s happening. As well as the soliloquy they also use a type of prologue at the start giving the audience an idea of what is to come later on in the film.

The film is aimed at females: young adults and teenagers. This film attracts them because of the storyline; it’s your typical love story with a dangerous twist that makes you want more. The story is like Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending but has broken the conventions of a love story; it’s something new and the idea of what happens to this normal school girl makes the audience feel that it’s ok to be the ‘normal girl’. The story has a mix of both tense, scary scenes and light, fun scenes. This balance between the two makes the film entertaining. The actors who play the characters show them in a believable way and the dynamics between them helps the film move along. As well as the actors’ portrayal of the characters the audience is attracted to the film because of the way they look such as Robert Pattinson who was a teen/child model before he went into acting.

This film has had an impact on the audience in that they have fallen in love with the characters, which has made the unknown actors into big stars; it has also made ‘Twilight’ goods sale in high numbers; buying things like tops, badges and posters. This film has changed the way in which people see vampires. They have gone from scary creatures of the night to sexy creatures who have big followings; with fan sites and debates about the film all over the internet and spin off books.