Bella Unites the Werewolves and Vampires in Eclipse

“Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice. / From what I've tasted of desire / I hold with those who favor fire. / But if it had to perish twice, / I think I know enough of hate / To say that for destruction ice / Is also great / And would suffice.”

This short Robert Frost poem, Fire and Ice, accompanies our first glimpse of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and her chivalrous boyfriend, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), in Eclipse, the third movie in the Twilight saga. The poem appeared in the book as an epigraph; here, it seems to be part of a homework assignment. The contrast between fire and ice fits the story, as Bella finds herself sandwiched between virile Jacob (Taylor Lautner), a werewolf, and rigid Edward, a vampire.

Undead Edward is icy to the touch, while Jacob is so overheated that he spends all his time shirtless. The destructive edge of the poem fits Bella’s situation too, as we are left to contemplate which has caused her more distress: the apparent chilly indifference of Edward, her one true love, in the second installment, or the fiery passion of Jacob when she sees him as a valued friend who can never be anything more. It sets the tone well for the conflict-laden film to follow, making it an appropriate movie for me to watch during the first weekend of National Poetry Month.

In Eclipse, Edward is back, and Bella is content, though she recoils whenever he mentions marriage, even as she pushes for him to transform her into a vampire. Her protective father Charlie (Billy Burke), who provides most of the film’s funniest moments, doesn’t think much of Edward, since he witnessed the depths of despair to which Bella sank after her dream boy left her. He’d much rather see her pal around with her old chum Jacob.

Bella, who has decided that she will become a vampire immediately after graduation, wants to repair their friendship and spend some time with him before they are parted forever. That’s one nice thing about Bella here. She spends a lot of time thinking about how her disappearance will affect those who care about her, which makes her seem less self-absorbed. There’s also her role as a sort of intermediary between the Cullens and the werewolves. “I’m Switzerland,” she declares, and because of her, these natural enemies are able to work together and strengthen the truce between their two groups.

When I read the books, I liked Eclipse much better than the two that preceded it. In this case, I liked it about as much as the two previous movies, so I guess that means I preferred the movie versions of the first two but not the third. I did generally find it to be a pretty decent adaptation, though parts seem rushed, and some of the side characters show up so briefly that it almost seems silly to have them there.

Werewolves Leah and Seth Clearwater particularly suffer, as do Bella’s school friends. As prominent as her role is in the book, I was disappointed not to see more of Alice (Ashley Greene), Edward’s “sister” and my favorite character in the series. Still, she makes a big impression when she shows up. Jodele Ferland has a small but memorable role as Bree, a sweet young girl who becomes a vampire but never really participates in the violence for which she was transformed. She’s not on screen much and she barely speaks, but she has a great emotional impact, and the conclusion of her arc gives us important information about other characters. I also thought the backstories of Jasper and Rosalie, two of the Cullen siblings, were handled quite well.

Generally, I enjoyed the scenes involving Bella, which constituted most of the movie, and the three leads work well together. Of the three, I think Lautner’s performance was probably the strongest, but Pattinson and Stewart are fine. We also periodically cut to Seattle, where a young vampire named Riley (Xavier Samuel) is busy attempting to control a horde of newborn vampires wreaking havoc on the city. These scenes are disorienting and disturbing, and it takes most of the movie to figure out how it really fits in, at least if you haven’t read the books, which is the case with my parents.

Despite a general lack of blood, this movie is quite violent in its own way as the vampires find uniquely unpleasant ways of destroying each other. The grotesque nature of these moments is enough to encourage me to warn parents with young children to avoid it. On the other hand, there’s no profanity to speak of, and while there is some lip-locking that goes on, the physical intimacy never goes beyond that, and it’s refreshing to hear old-fashioned Edward talk about how important it is to him to remain chaste before marriage.

Two more installments remain in the series. I’m not so sure that Breaking Dawn really merits the two-movie treatment, especially since there are such long stretches of the time in which not much happens. Still, I’ll be very curious to see how it all comes together. If they’re as good as Eclipse, then I won’t mind spending three or four hours watching the Twilight saga come to a close.

Alice Helps Make New Moon Less Dreary On Film Than On Paper

I am not a fan of Romeo and Juliet. I suppose this means that I’m not much of a romantic, though I frankly don’t see what’s so swoonworthy about committing suicide in the wake of a loved one’s death. Especially when you’ve only known that person for a short period of time. In any case, I think the more romantic thing is to find a way of honoring the life of the one who has been lost. The only thing that makes Romeo and Juliet bearable for me is that the desperate actions of these two silly teenagers lead to the end of an equally silly feud between their families.

New Moon, the second installment in the Twilight movie series, makes the allusions to this Shakespeare tragedy apparent by showing Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Kristen Stewart) watching a movie version in class and discussing it. Within the first ten minutes of the movie, Edward starts in with the morbid talk, confessing how jealous he is of Romeo’s fragility. He comes right out and announces that if Bella ever dies - which she eventually will, as her birthday reminds her, since he steadfastly refuses to transform her into a vampire like him - he will kill himself.

Perhaps I should give him a break, since he’s lived more than a century and some world-weariness is bound to set in. But Edward has half a dozen people who care deeply about him, so it’s just as selfish for him to consider taking his own life as it would be for Bella, especially knowing that virtually the only way it could be done would be to go to the Volturi, the governing body of vampires to reside in Italy, and request that they tear him limb from limb, a pretty gruesome image for the rest of the Cullens to have to live with. But then when one is in love, there is a tendency to do things that don’t make a lot of sense, including tossing away life in the midst of despair.

There’s a lot of despair in New Moon, making it easily the hardest of the books for me to get through. The movie retains plenty of that, but it’s a little more tolerable, since we don’t have to put up with chapter after chapter of Bella’s morose narration.  Most of the voiceovers we do get are in the form of e-mails Bella writes to Edward’s “sister,” Alice, my favorite character in the series.  Although Bella isn’t actually sending them out, the very fact that she is framing these thoughts as writing to a friend - and such a relentlessly cheerful one at that - instead of wallowing in self-pity in complete isolation gives her musings a hopeful edge.

New Moon takes place three or four months after the conclusion of Twilight. Edward and Bella have spent every spare summer moment in each other’s company, often with Alice in tow, and now a new school year - Bella’s senior year - has begun. With it comes Bella’s birthday, which makes her despondent, since it means that she will now be older than Edward. Bella’s dad Charlie (Billy Burke) ribs her about her unsettled response to aging, as does Edward, while Alice is just overjoyed to be able to throw a birthday party for someone.

Bella’s misgivings about this plan stem from her own aversion to growing older, but it’s soon apparent that a birthday party in a house full of vampires is inadvisable for other reasons. A minor mishap leaves Bella bleeding and nearly lunch for Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), who hasn’t quite mastered the ability to control himself around human blood. It’s enough to convince Edward that she is fundamentally unsafe in his company, so he leaves, icily informing her that the family will be moving on, that she isn’t invited to join them and that she will never hear from them again.

The bulk of the movie involves Bella gradually moving away from her soul-deadened state. At first she moves through her days on auto-pilot, and night terrors torture her - and frighten her concerned dad - when the sun goes down. Still, somewhere deep down, she clings to the thought that Edward and Alice, who she misses nearly as much, will return one day. So when Charlie tells her he thinks she should move to Jacksonville to be with her mother and get away from the environment associated with so much sadness, she realizes that she needs to snap out of it if she ever wants to see them again.

On an outing with bubble-headed frenemy Jessica (Anna Kendrick), she discovers that when she is in a dangerous situation, Edward appears to her. Whether it’s just a product of her own imagination matters little, so deep is her craving for just the tiniest hint of Edward. This leads her to motorcycle mechanic Jacob (Taylor Lautner), the family friend who is as warm and jovial as Edward is cold and stiff. Lautner bulked up quite noticeably between the first two movies. There was talk of replacing the actor because he didn’t seem grown-up enough, but Lautner proves his mettle here in a performance that allows him to be both vulnerable and masculine while balancing his love for Bella with his strange new brotherhood with other members of the Quileute tribe. Like LOST’s Sawyer, he has a habit of taking his shirt off at every opportunity, and he’s got the muscles and the tan to pull it off. When Edward’s shirt comes off after we finally see him again toward the end of the movie, it’s not such a pretty sight.

This movie switches directors to Chris Weitz, which changes the tone a bit. In some cases, that’s good. For instance, the green-tinted scenery problem of Twilight is not present here; the cinematography looks much more natural, except during the action sequences, and then the special effects look pretty cheesy. Sadly, the sound mixing is, if anything, even worse in this second movie; not only does the music drown out the dialogue, but so do rainstorms and other ambient sounds. I wish I’d had the subtitles on because I know I missed a few things.

Speaking of which, my parents, whose knowledge of the books is limited to what little I’ve told them, frequently found the movie confusing, and I had to explain plot points to them. This suggests to me that the screenplay did not do a very good job of laying things out for those who don’t have book knowledge to help them connect the dots. And as in the book, the misunderstanding that precipitates Edward’s decision to seek out the Volturi is a pretty flimsy thing to hang the climax on. Additionally, while the violence is still pretty limited, there is a bit more of it than in the first movie.

On the plus side, we get a lot more of Alice in this movie, even if Ashley Greene still is only on the screen for maybe a quarter of the movie. This funky, effervescent counterpoint to all of Bella and Edward’s brooding just makes me smile every time she appears, even when she makes a couple of less than gracious remarks about Jacob, whose tribe has long been at odds with vampires. Just the device of Bella’s imaginary correspondence brings Alice’s character into greater prominence, which I appreciated.

I continued to enjoy Burke’s performance as the gruff but doting Charlie and, despite the brevity of his scenes, quickly grew fond of The Red Green Show’s Graham Greene’s chummy Harry Clearwater, one of Charlie’s closest friends. I also liked the introduction of Michael Sheen as the intriguing Aro, the member of the Volturi who does the most talking in the electrifying scene in which Edward, Bella and Alice have a private audience with them. He’s charming and has a giddy quality about him that almost reminds me of Arthur Weasley, Ron’s Muggle-loving dad in the Harry Potter series, but there’s also something deeply dangerous about him, as we see most plainly in an almost blink-and-you-miss-it scene that marks the conclusion of Bella’s whirlwind trip to Italy.

In retrospect, I tend to think of the first two books in this series largely as set-up for the last two, which I find much more compelling and less self-involved from Bella’s perspective. I don’t find Bella quite as insufferable in the movie version of New Moon, largely because there’s just not nearly as much time for her to moan about the heart-shaped hole in her chest. The movie only squeezes in two or three references in comparison to the book’s dozens of mentions. By the same token, while she still turns into a bit of an adrenaline junkie in the movie, she only does three really dangerous things before Alice shows up at her door to find out whether the suicide she thought she saw in one of her visions was actually true. So she’s easier to put up with here, though I still find her annoying.

Ultimately, I think I would mostly agree with my dad, who said he didn’t like the second movie as much as the first, but I did like it better than the book, and I think it sets us up nicely for the more interesting story to come in the third. I’m ready when you are, Netflix...

Stephenie Meyer's Story Gets Some Well-Deserved Editing in Twilight

A couple of weeks ago, my friend and I went to see Vampires Suck, a movie that spoofs the first two installments of the Twilight film series. This reminded me that I’d never actually seen the movies myself, though I read the books last year. I decided that it was time to remedy this situation, and not only did I put Twilight at the top of my queue, I told my parents that they had to watch it with me whether they liked it or not. They veered toward “not,” especially my dad, who is disturbed by the way vampires have become such a prominent part of pop culture of late. But when the movie was over, he told me, “Well, that was nothing like what I expected.” And he meant it in a good way.

Twilight, which is directed by Catherine Hardwicke with a screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, is based on the first installment of Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling young adult series about a plain Jane named Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), who moves from sunny Phoenix, Arizona, where she lives with her flighty mother, to rainy Forks, Washington, where her father, Charlie (Billy Burke), is a police chief. They haven’t seen much of each other lately, making the transition especially awkward, though Charlie is a kind man who wants his daughter to be safe and happy, and this comes across well in the movie. Though her insistence on calling him “Charlie” feels a tad disrespectful, Bella and her father have a pretty good rapport, and one of her more admirable traits is her concern about his well-being when she finds herself endangered toward the end of the movie.

Bella is a bit of a morose oddball who immediately reminded my mom of Lydia Deetz, the goth girl at the heart of the movie Beetlejuice and its subsequent animated spin-off series. I hadn’t made that connection before, but it’s pretty apt. One might also draw parallels with Beauty and the Beast, as Bella is an oddball with a self-sacrificial streak who’s close to her father and who falls in love with a man who is, in some sense, a monster. Additionally, her name means “beautiful swan,” calling to mind Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling; Bella is rather awkward and clumsy, but she dreams of one day attaining the otherworldly grace of the Cullens, the strange family of whom she is so enamored.

The trouble is that the Cullens are vampires. She can tell from the start that there’s something different about Edward (Robert Pattinson), who is standoffish to the point of being rude when they first meet in science class. He then vanishes for several days, but when he returns, he is much more polite, and they begin to forge a tenuous friendship that is complicated when he rescues her from a classmate’s out-of-control car. Bella can’t forget the superhuman strength she witnessed, and when he comes to her rescue again, she begins to investigate his idiosyncrasies in earnest, with some help from longtime family friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner).

It isn’t long before Edward confirms her suspicions, confessing himself irresistibly drawn to the scent of her blood. Though he has tried to keep his distance from her for her own safety, Edward is just as smitten as Bella, and soon he agrees to attempt a romantic relationship, which leads to her meeting his adoptive family, all of whom have long sworn off human blood, instead satiating their thirst by hunting animals. Most of them welcome her warmly, but when they meet with a trio of vampires who are passing through the area, leaving a grisly trail in their wake, Bella gets a grim reminder of the fact that most vampires have not gone to such pains to make themselves civilized. Though Edward has sworn to protect her, will he be able to shield her from the vicious tracker who sets his sights upon her?

Perhaps the first adjective that comes to my mind in association with the Twilight series is “melodramatic”. Bella narrates the books, and we really get the sense that we are peeking into the diary of a teenage girl. Meyer isn’t a particularly stellar writer, and she gives us pages upon pages of Bella talking about Edward’s absolute perfection in the most eye-rolling of terms. Thankfully, though Bella does have a truncated narrative presence in the movie, almost all of this extraneous description is cut out, with the result that Bella becomes much more tolerable. The movie distills everything down to two hours, and for me, this is an improvement because, frankly, not all that much happens in Twilight. What does happen is interesting, but you have to read through a lot of rambling to find those nuggets of really compelling story. Some will argue that the movie leaves too much out or that it makes unnecessary changes; these are certainly complaints that I have had about the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies. But as a mere casual fan of this series whose chief complaint was irritation with Bella’s narrative style, I was very happy with how the movie zipped along.

Stewart does a good job of appearing sulky and insecure, while also highlighting some of her better qualities, including love for her parents and intellect. I’m glad that the movie gives us a little time with her schoolmates, who may seem a little bland in comparison to the mysterious Cullens but who allow her to at least enjoy a taste of normal high school life in Forks. Jessica (Anna Kendrick) is a bit of a pill, a rather phony girl who mostly seems drawn to Bella because she’s the new girl, which makes her inherently fascinating. More sincere in her friendship is the quiet Angela (Christian Serratos), whom Bella encourages when her timidity threatens to rob her of a treasured experience. Also part of Bella’s gang of school chums are friendly Eric (Justin Chon), who first welcomes her to school, and Mike, played by Michael Welch of Joan of Arcadia, who channels the same geek chic he brought to that show as a young man vying for Bella’s affections.

But mostly, it’s all about Edward for Bella. Pattinson, best known prior to this as golden boy Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, is uptight but chivalrous. He spends much of the movie with a pained expression on his face, but when he smiles, there is genuine sweetness there. When it comes down to it, he and Cedric are pretty similar: drop-dead gorgeous, athletic, intelligent and, most importantly, extremely ethical. Because he is so much stronger than Bella and because, despite having faithfully kept to his diet for decades, there’s still a part of him that thirsts for human blood, there are very practical reasons for the physical boundaries he places upon his relationship with her, but Edward is such an old-fashioned gentleman, I get the sense that even if he were wholly human, he wouldn’t be clamoring to get to second base with Bella. “It’s a movie about self-control,” was my dad’s comment when we had finished watching, and this is something that’s pretty refreshing to see in a teen movie in such a permissive age.

Lautner, who has turned into such a teen heartthrob in the past couple of years, doesn’t have a very large role in this movie, but he does a good job of capturing the boyish enthusiasm of this teen whose friendship with Bella dates back to their toddler years. I also enjoyed Gil Birmingham as his wheelchair-bound father Billy, one of Charlie’s closest friends. We don’t get to see too much of the Cullens either, except for patriarch Carlisle (Peter Facinelli), a deeply compassionate physician. I wouldn’t have minded more time with this clan, especially the effusive Alice (Ashley Greene), my favorite character in the series, but we see enough of them to get a good sense of their personalities. Well, not so much “brothers” Emmet and Jasper, but they’re not particularly well-established in the first book either.

Of the villainous trio who confront the Cullens during a game of baseball, I find the suave Laurent (Edi Gathegi), who speaks with a distinct accent and is the gentlest of the three, to be the most fascinating. James (Cam Gigandet) is sadistic, as is his main squeeze Victoria (Rachelle Lafevre), who vanishes for a while but turns up in the last scene of the movie in a moment that screams “sequel”.

While these three are responsible for some devastating carnage, the movie depicts it in the least gruesome manner possible, usually cutting away before we really see anything. There is one pretty intense scene toward the end, but the bulk of it is reminiscent of the battle between Gandalf and Saruman in Fellowship of the Ring, with two supernatural beings lobbing each other across the room and not really inflicting much severe damage. I appreciated the effort to tone down the violence. Moreover, there’s practically no profanity in the movie, and Bella and Edward’s romance is still all about restraint at this point, as it is for most of the series, so we don’t see anything more intense than a couple of kisses in terms of sensuality. For a PG-13 movie, Twilight is pretty tame.

If I have one major complaint about the movie, it’s the music, which is generally loud and raucous and often threatens to drown out dialogue. I found it incredibly intrusive. I was also distracted by the fact that most of the movie is bathed in a green haze, making it seem as though I was watching through tinted sunglasses. There were other elements of the cinematography I found annoying as well, though I did like the spectacular views of the meadow and of the valley that stretches out far below Edward and Bella when he takes her to a spot that serves as an incredible vantage point.

The special effects are, on the whole, pretty cheesy. When my brother was dragged to see the movie in theaters, he particularly complained about Edward’s sparkly skin. I’m sure it made more of an impression on the big screen, but it really only turns up in one scene, and from where I was sitting, I barely noticed it. More noticeable to me were the pasty complexions of Edward and his fellow vampires. Yes, they’re supposed to be pale, but this almost looked like somebody had just come along and slathered their faces with cream cheese. Not terribly impressive.

But for the most part, I must say that I preferred the movie to the book. It probably helps that this time around, I know exactly where the story is going, and I liked the last two installments in the series much better than the first two. I think that ending gave me a better appreciation of the beginning, as did reading Spotlight, John Granger’s book exploring the literary alchemy and symbolism he believes underpin the books. Mostly, though, I think the movie version of Twilight takes a good but overwrought story and gives it some much-needed editing.

This Fall, Fall For Secondhand Serenade's A Twist in my Story

I work in a kiosk in the mall, which means that even when there aren’t many customers around, I can’t honestly describe my shift as “quiet,” since I’m getting a full blast of the mall radio at all times. During one glorious kiosk season, whoever was in charge of the radio must have been feeling nostalgic, and I got treated to the likes of Jim Croce, the Turtles, Arlo Guthrie and even the occasional Simon and Garfunkel. Usually, however, the music that plays is much more recent, and little of it appeals to my sensibilities. Still, once in a while, a song will capture my attention, which is what happened this year with Fall For You, a song that I have heard nearly every day I’ve worked since the kiosk opened. I don’t mind; in fact, I look forward to it. So I decided that I should find out just where this song came from, and that led me to Secondhand Serenade.

I’d never heard of this one-man band before, nor had I ever encountered one of the songs written by singer-songwriter John Vesely, who has released three albums under the band name inspired by the fact that he began writing songs to sing to his wife, meaning that any other listeners were getting them “secondhand”. Sadly, this sweet sentiment comes with a bitter story, as Vesely and his wife separated in 2008, the same year that he released A Twist in the Story, the album from which Fall For You is drawn, and the pain of the fracturing relationship is evident throughout.

In this second album, Vesely has orchestral backing, and other vocalists occasionally chime in, but he frequently harmonizes with himself as he did on his first album, often with quite affecting results. When my fondness for the album’s platinum single led me to track down the rest of the songs, I feared that it would turn out to be a fluke and that the rest of his music wouldn’t particularly appeal to me. However, I am happy to report that instead, I’ve found another artist to add to my list of favorites.

Fall for You - This song comes second on the album, but since it’s what pulled me in to begin with, I felt it fitting to start here. What captures my attention first is the piano. I’m always a sucker for a melodically strong song in which piano is the most prominent instrument, whether it’s something gorgeously legato like John Denver’s For You or refreshingly exuberant like Train’s Drops of Jupiter. Here, I love the way it makes its presence known through sparseness, only one chord per measure, before giving way to more persistent accompaniment in the first chorus. It’s almost drowned out during the electrified, percussion-heavy second verse, chorus and bridge, but before the final angsty chorus, we’re treated to a final chorus backed just by that delicate piano.

Vesely doesn’t have the smoothest of voices; there’s a raw edge to it that reminds me of Billie Jo Armstrong, particularly in Wake Me Up When September Ends, probably my favorite Green Day song. He has an especially plaintive tone here; we get the sense that this is a relationship that has gone sour but that he is still very much in love and ready to own up to whatever of his own mistakes may have contributed to the rift. In that regard, this song calls to mind Journey’s Open Arms, a passionate ballad that will always hold a special place in my heart for causing me to swoon for Clay Aiken, who sang it during the semi-finals of American Idol.

But I digress, as I am wont to do. The point is that the combination of the dynamic use of piano, very personal lyrics and the wrenching delivery make this a song that I genuinely don’t object to having lodged in my head all day. Vesely has an anguished tone throughout much of the song, at times almost shouting the lyrics, while nearly whispering at others. The aching vulnerability in the word “live“ on the last piano-driven chorus is especially affecting. Displaying a curious mixture of despair and hope, along with a repetitive phrase that burrows right into your brain, Fall For You is the album’s standout track. “Tonight will be the night that I will fall for you over again. Don’t make me change my mind, or I won‘t live to see another day, I swear it‘s true, because a girl like you is impossible to find. You’re impossible to find.”

Like a Knife - This track is more driven by electric guitar, and it too has to do with the breakdown of a relationship. It’s a natural lead-in to Fall For You, as the song seems to stem from the immediate aftermath of a break-up. At times, the strings of the electric guitar seem to slash like a knife; elsewhere in the song, when he sings of her walking out of his life, a solemn military-style march accompanies him. Meanwhile, his intricate harmonies toward the end of the song express a yearning for togetherness. “Goodbyes are meant for lonely people standing in the rain, and no matter where I go, it’s always pouring all the same.”

Maybe - Another pleading song, with a harsher edge to it than Fall For You. Electric guitars accompany Vesely’s accusatory vocals as he sings of a woman who refuses to listen to his side of the story. This, too, includes a note of optimism toward the end, but it feels like a vain hope, as though this relationship has long passed the point of repair. One of the most hard-rocking tracks on the album. “There goes my ring; it might as well have been shattered. And I'm here to sing about the things that mattered. About the things that made us feel alive for oh so long. About the things that kept you on my side when I was wrong.”

Stranger - This piano-heavy track begins with some mysterious-sounding instrumentation I can’t quite identify, but it adds a mystical edge to this mellow song that seems to have inspired the cover art of an angel lying on a couch. An unabashedly affectionate song that is one of my favorites on the album, it features some nice harmony and the sorts of sentiments that seem likely to set the heart of many a romantic aflutter. “Your beauty seems so far away, I’d have to write a thousand songs to make you comprehend how beautiful you are.”

Your Call - A nostalgic series of recollections backed by acoustic guitar. The lines in the first verse are parsed rather strangely, but that makes them stand out more. I also like the way the violins are plucked to add a sense of urgency in the last verse. Still, my favorite part of the song is the beautifully sung chorus, in which Vesely quietly sings with himself, adding to the earnest quality of the song. “I was born to tell you I love you, and I am torn to do what I have to.”

Suppose - This electric guitar-heavy song is more on the rockin’ side of things than most tracks on the album. It reminds me a bit of If I Loved You from the musical Carousel in that most of the “suppose” statements he is making are the way that he actually feels. A very emotionally raw track. “My eyes are screaming for the sight of you, and tonight, I’m dreaming of all the things that we’ve been through.”

A Twist in My Story - This title track is another acoustic number, and since Vesely refers to his divorce as the twist in his story, I get the sense that this is about him learning how to live again after a period of numbness following the breakdown of his relationship with his wife. It reminds me of Bella, the narrator of most of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, in New Moon, when the departure of her boyfriend Edward causes a complete detachment from life, until one day she suddenly finds herself starting to engage with the world again. I especially like the way the guitar is played to accentuate the idea of his heart roaring back to life, and the majestic-sounding percussion toward the end of the song is also impressive. “Say, what’s that sound? It’s my heartbeat. It’s getting much louder. My heartbeat is stronger than ever. I’m feeling so alive. I’m feeling so alive.”

Why - Piano and guitar work together on this introspective song that exploits Vesely’s upper register well. The song is an acknowledgment of past wrongs on his part and a plea for understanding on hers, with the verses answering all of the questions the chorus asks. It reminds me a bit of John Denver’s I’m Sorry, with the speaker apologizing but never truly accepting the blame for the breakdown. “What matters most? Everything that you feel while listening to every word that I sing. I promise I will bring you home.”

Stay Close, Don’t Go - Electric guitars are prominent on this plaintive song in which he pleads for her not to leave. Again, I find myself thinking of Bella, who becomes so dependent upon Edward that she can’t imagine herself living without him, while the verse in which he confesses to staring at her as she sleeps reminds me of Edward. At no point in the series, however, is he in any genuine danger of Bella leaving him, whereas she lives in a constant state of adulation and insecurity that he will abandon her. At any rate, a rather angsty song. “Don’t you see, I’m not the only one for you, but you’re the only one for me.”

Pretend - There’s an aching tone to this acoustic guitar-driven track. The relationship has broken down at this point, and he wants to move on, but he can’t figure out how to make a clean break. A melodic song with a despairing tone, it is one of the quieter songs on the album. “It’s hard to be all alone. I never got through your disguise. I guess I’ll just go and face all my fear.”

Goodbye - I’m back to thinking about John Denver again in this mostly mellow track backed by acoustic guitar. “It’s not enough to say I’m sorry” seems like an appropriate admission of the inadequacy of a semi-sincere apology, even in the form of a beautiful song. I’m Sorry has a companion song in Goodbye Again, and Why’s companion is this repetitive song in which he confesses that he just needs to say goodbye. The song ends with his layered voice lending an air of harmony to the final moments of an album that is so acutely focused on discord.

A Twist in My Story is not a particularly uplifting album. It reminds me of Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years, a musical for two people in which the man chronicles his five-year relationship from beginning to end and she from end to beginning. Vesely only gives us hints of the heady early stages of this romance; mainly it’s just a collection of reflections on what went wrong and how to go on living now that everything has changed. A Twist in My Story is a very October sort of CD: bleak but beautiful.

The Twilight Series

The Twilight series isn't as good as Harry Potter, but it's still pretty engrossing, and it gets better as it goes along.

Examine Harry Potter Through a Scholar's Lens in John Granger's The Deathly Hallows Lectures

I just finished Breaking Dawn, the final installment in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, and it made me recall the anticipation and pleasure of reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows two years ago. I was exhilarated to finally come to the conclusion of the saga but depressed that it was all over. One of the ways I kept the series alive despite its conclusion was writing poems focusing on various characters. Another was following and participating in online conversations about the books.

Some of the meatiest discussions occurred at Hogwarts Professor: Thoughts for the serious reader of Harry Potter. I visited the site now and again, pondering the insights of John Granger, who runs the site, and his fellow Potterphiles, and when last year saw the release of Granger‘s The Deathly Hallows Lectures, I snatched up a copy.

Granger, who has written several books exploring deeper layers of meaning he believes are embedded in J. K. Rowling’s series, applies some of the ideas from his earlier volumes to the seventh book. He makes reference to other Harry Potter books, particularly Philosopher’s / Sorcerer’s Stone, but his primary focus is on this specific book. In the first chapter, he explains his Five Keys to Unlocking Harry Potter, which include Narrative Misdirection, Literary Alchemy, Hero’s Journey, Traditional Symbolism and Postmodern Themes, giving a brief overview as to how each applies specifically to Deathly Hallows.

The second chapter has to do with literary alchemy, a subject with which I was unfamiliar prior to reading Granger’s work. He gives a good primer on what it’s all about and offers several compelling examples to suggest that Rowling was using it as a framework. First there’s the alchemical wedding. Then there’s the nigredo, or black stage, which is characterized by despair and disorder. Albedo, the white stage, has to do with purification, and rubedo, the red stage, completes the process with its “resolution of contraries”. Granger’s thoughts on this subject are fascinating, and it’s fun to go through his lists of tip-offs to the alchemical formula and contemplate how many of these references were placed there by Rowling for the very reasons he suggests.

The subject of sight is extremely prominent in this book, and Granger explores it in different ways throughout the fourth through seventh chapters. Chapter four deals with Harry’s mother Lily and the significance of her green eyes, particularly in light of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Chapter five points out all of the ways in which Rowling incorporates sight-oriented symbols - mirrors and eyes - into Deathly Hallows, while chapter six addresses the value of “taking Harry seriously,” an endeavor for which Granger recommends using “triangular vision,” an idea connected to the novel’s central symbol, which is explored in more depth in the seventh chapter.

With his first book on the subject, Granger became a pioneer in the area of studying Harry through a Christian lens. Given the fierce debate that has raged around the suitability of these books for a Christian audience, I have found his conclusions welcome and refreshing, so I was probably most interested in the third chapter, which has to do with the Christian elements of Deathly Hallows. These are so numerous and significant that when I finished Rowling’s epic, I couldn’t help thinking that it ought to put to rest many of those who would object to the books on religious grounds. Granger picks up on even more than I did, and I came away more convinced than ever of Rowling’s rightful place amongst the giants of Christian fantasy like J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

Each chapter comes with a series of helpful endnotes, often with websites listed so that readers can easily delve more deeply into the subject at hand. The chapters are also broken up with bold-printed section titles, making it easy to flip through quickly and get a very basic idea of what is being discussed. Additionally, there’s a lengthy index in the back. My favorite aspect of the book for quick reference is the FAQ, in which Granger answers 31 questions over the course of 36 pages. Question 21, “How does Deathly Hallows fit in with or complete the seven book series?”, is especially worth reading, as he charts all of the similarities between the first and last book.

Though there are a couple places when Granger goes a little over my head, in general his writing style is very accessible. For a book with only seven chapters, it’s a fairly lengthy 300 pages, and I wouldn’t feel obligated to read it front to back; I skipped around, reading different sections and chapters as the mood struck. It’s a book I continue to enjoy flipping through now and then, and I expect that others who love examining Harry from all angles would feel the same way.

Stephenie Meyer Hits Her Stride With Eclipse

October seems like an ideal month to finish up Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, which involves an ordinary girl caught up in the conflicting worlds of vampires and werewolves. If I can get to the library in the next couple of days, I might manage to be done with the series by Halloween. Though the final installment was not particularly well-received - I recall a particularly derisive review in Entertainment Weekly - I've got the itch to read it, since I just finished Eclipse, the third book in the series, and liked it about twice as much as either of the previous books.

Eclipse finds 18-year-old Bella Swann back to her relationship with Edward Cullen, a drop-dead gorgeous, unfailingly courteous vampire. In the previous book, he had abandoned her for about six months, intending to stay out of her life entirely for her own good, but perilous circumstances had brought them back together, resulting in Edward's promise never to leave her again. As she has gotten increasingly entangled in the vampires' world, Edward finally has agreed to turn her into a vampire, though he has deep misgivings, and he refuses to consider it before high school graduation.

Meanwhile, Bella's dad Charlie, who despises Edward for the pain he caused Bella in his absence, has his daughter under house arrest after finding out that she spent much of her Edwardless time zooming around on a motorcycle trying to get herself seriously injured. So her time with Edward is limited, and there's an additional wrinkle in the form of Jacob Black, an old family friend to whom Bella became especially close while Edward was out of town. As the book begins, Jacob, stung by her return to Edward after all that he did to her, is still refusing to speak to Bella, and she's still not too happy with him for ratting her out about the motorcycle. Moreover, Jacob is a werewolf, the natural enemy of the vampire, so Edward doesn't want her going near him for any kind of reconciliation. But soon, a sinister threat will force Edward and Jacob both to set aside their prejudices and jealousies for the greater good.

Reading Eclipse, I couldn't help but think that the first two books might have been better if they'd been consolidated into one, cutting out a lot of extraneous prose. New Moon's main purpose of developing Bella's friendship with Jacob probably could have been accomplished if Twilight had skipped a couple hundred pages of describing Edward's perfect features and if New Moon has skipped a couple hundred pages of Bella feeling sorry for herself. In any case, though, once I got to Eclipse, the first two volumes seemed mostly like set-up. Here, we really get to the meat of the story.

Bella is still a rather annoying character, whiny and sulky. She gets huffy with most of the other characters in this book, particularly Charlie and Alice, Edward's "sister" and her best friend, because of their attempts to "babysit" her, and Edward and Jacob, because of their disdain for each other. Now that she has Edward back, it's rather refreshing to see that her life doesn't completely revolve around him. She tries to make the most of her few remaining months with Angela, a sweet, intuitive girl at school, as she reasons that she will have to break off contact once she makes the transformation - though I would think that she could maybe manage an occasional e-mail... Additionally, once she and Jacob get over their aggravation with one another, Bella spends as much time with him as she can, even when it means defying Edward, because she knows how deeply she has hurt him and yearns to somehow make things right. Unfortunately, her show of fraternal affection only muddies the waters, leaving smitten Jacob more reason to hope.

Some of Jacob's actions in this novel are frustrating too, but understandable, since he is so desperately in love with Bella and so afraid of losing her, not just to Edward, but to vampirism. For how can they maintain any sort of friendship when she has transformed into his mortal enemy? Meyer gives us more background on each of the werewolves and, most interestingly, lets us sit in on a pow-wow where the elders of the Quileute tribe of which Jacob is a part recount the old legends explaining the origins of their werewolf forms. Meanwhile, we're also given insight into the backgrounds of a couple of the Cullens, with Jasper's history particularly important to understanding the string of deaths that has nearby Seattle terrorized.

Bubbly, affectionate Alice is still my favorite character, and hers is a nearly constant presence throughout the novel. While the obsessive quality of Bella's relationship with Edward gives it an occasionally unhealthy flavor, her friendship with innocent Alice is a breath of fresh air, despite Bella's tendency to be a wet blanket. Though he doesn't trust Edward, Charlie adores cheerful Alice, which is quite understandable; everyone who knows her seems to regard her with the same unabashed affection lavished upon Kaylee, the empathetic ship's mechanic in Firefly. Like Edward, she seems to appreciate the value of the human experience more than Bella does, and with no memories of her own human life, she never misses an opportunity to live vicariously through her.  Additionally, her unique ability to see into a constantly changing future makes her an indispensable resource as the Cullens strategize about their upcoming ambush.

This book feels much more balanced than the previous two, as Bella divides her time between Edward and Jacob, and there's a slow build toward the book's final conflict; we see it coming almost from the beginning, and Meyer heightens the tension over several hundred pages. What I especially like is the way this threat, from another group of vampires, forces the Cullens and the werewolves into an alliance, particularly Edward and Jacob. Additionally, while Carlisle, the Cullen patriarch, has a pretty small role in this book, his compassionate nature manifests itself powerfully on a couple of occasions. It's unfortunate that the happy event of these feuding factions uniting must be precipitated by the threat of violence; readers are treated to a fairly gruesome battle, though much of it occurs "off-screen".

One of the oddest elements of the book is Bella's revulsion when it comes to the subject of marriage. Her life revolves around Edward. He is like air to her, like water and food. There's really no way to exaggerate the heights of her devotion to him. And she wants nothing more than for him to end her human life by transforming her into a vampire, a permanent commitment if ever I heard one. Yet when Edward tells her that he will only transform her himself (as opposed to Carlisle, who has volunteered his services) if she agrees to marry him first, she recoils. She's completely willing to give up her human existence to spend the rest of eternity with Edward, but marriage? Man, that's just asking too much! She has her reasons, but in context, it's impossible for them not to sound pretty weak and silly.

The pacing of this book is much better, the conflict more compelling, whether it's the ever-present sense of danger from intruding vampires or the tug Bella feels between Edward, who she knows she can't live without, and Jacob, who dragged her out of the depths of despair during her darkest moments. Meyer aptly opens the book with the Robert Frost poem "Fire and Ice," and throughout the book, the metaphor is extended, with warm, furry Jacob fire and stone-cold Edward ice. Given the extent to which this series is all about Edward, I couldn't imagine that it could end any other way than with Bella and Edward together, presumably with her finally a vampire herself.

Whenever I read the passages in which she and Jacob were together, I couldn't help thinking of Ryan Kelly's angst-ridden rendition of Ride On, with part of Bella, a part she can't quite always submerge, aching to return Jacob's romantic devotion. The violence of the line "Run your claw along my gut one last time" seems particularly appropriate for this young man who is also a savage creature, as is the speaker's assertion, "I could never go with you, no matter how I wanted to." Yet Meyer manages to make the possibility of Bella choosing Jacob over Edward actually seem plausible.

My understanding is that when Eclipse came out, it was billed as a conclusion to the series, and if Meyer had left it at this, I can imagine fans being disappointed. The ending does have a ring of finality to it, but readers who waited for three books to see certain things occur have to count on their imaginations to fill in the blanks. However, since there is now a fourth installment, a true conclusion, I think this book's ending is just right, a reflection of a book that exceeded its predecessors considerably.

Edwardless Bella Turns Evel Knievel in Stephenie Meyer's New Moon

I’ve been hearing a lot about Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series over the past few years, so I figured it was about time for me to read the books and see what all the fuss was about. I recently finished New Moon, the second book in the series, and found it better than the first in some ways and worse in others.

Once again, the book is narrated by Bella Swan, a fairly ordinary 18-year-old living with her father, a police chief, in the gloomy town of Forks, Washington. As the book begins, life is good for Bella. She and her father get along well, and she’s in a stable, albeit strange, relationship with Edward Cullen, the man of her dreams. What’s more, she gets to hang out with his family, who she loves, particularly his effusive sister Alice and tender mother Esme. But Bella is not happy, since turning 18 means being older than Edward, who, as a vampire, is permanently stuck at the age of 17, when he was bitten. It’s a painful reminder to her that no matter how deeply she and Edward care for one another, their time together is limited by her mortality.

I expected that Bella would spend most of the book in a tug-of-war with Edward, trying to convince him to transform her into a vampire like him, an act that he unselfishly refuses to take because he believes that it would destroy her soul. To my surprise, however, Edward vanished after the first few chapters and remained absent for the majority of the book. I can’t imagine that this was a popular decision among readers who had so eagerly anticipated another 600 pages of the exquisite Edward. It was aggravating for me too, especially toward the beginning, when Bella is so bogged down in the enormity of her loss that it becomes painful to read. Then again, there’s the sweetness of anticipation, as you just know that Edward is going to show up again before the book is over.

Edward leaves Bella amid claims he no longer loves her, but after watching seasons of such behavior from Clark Kent on Smallville, it was pretty obvious to me that this was just a line he gave her in order to make their parting for her own protection more permanent. His departure follows a minor accident that demonstrates how dangerous Bella’s position is, even among vampires as benevolent as Edward and his “family”. I was disturbed to find myself siding with Bella, wishing Edward would just bite Bella already and end the complications.

But New Moon removes Bella from Edward long enough for her to form an attachment to someone else, building a relationship that feels much more authentic and healthy, a love forged in friendship without all the obsessive underpinnings. She eases the incessantly referenced hole in her heart by palling around with Jacob Black, who is a couple of years younger than her. Cheerful and easy to talk to, he helps her to come out of a four-month-long stupor – until he suddenly becomes distant. It turns out that Jacob has a secret too. He is a werewolf, and werewolves and vampires are natural enemies.

On the whole, I found Jacob a more interesting companion for Bella than Edward. They seem to be more on equal footing, as opposed to Edward’s obvious superiority, which Bella describes for us ad nauseam. In this book, the pain is so raw that Bella rarely allows herself to think about Edward, which means we’re spared a lot of tedious praise of his various perfections. However, she spends far too much time complaining about the gaping hole Edward left in her chest. The book invites comparisons with Romeo and Juliet, particularly since Bella draws such comparisons herself. As someone who never found that story romantic, I can’t say that was encouraging, though I did appreciate Bella’s sudden empathy for Paris as she assigned that part in the tale to Jacob.

I always thought that Romeo and Juliet were a couple of stupid teenagers who were all too willing to destroy their lives and tear their families apart for the sake of a powerful infatuation. Though Bella and Edward are generally more considerate of how their actions affect others, each finds the thought of living while the other is dead unendurable. There’s a religious fervor to their devotion; Bella decides that she can survive Edward’s abandonment, just as long as she knows that somewhere out there, he exists. He later confesses to similar feelings, and when he is led to believe that Bella has committed suicide, he immediately tries to follow suit.

Bella, at least, does not attempt suicide in this book, but she does indulge in several horribly dangerous stunts, partly out of a spiteful desire to break her promise to Edward not to do anything reckless and partly because, when the adrenaline really starts pumping, she starts hearing his voice in her head, as clearly as if he was standing next to her. This destructive behavior is one of the most problematic elements of the book, and a reflection of the dangerously obsessive nature of this particular romance. The sequence in which Edward finally comes back into the picture is the most vivid in the series thus far, all set into motion by a stupid misunderstanding that makes the comparison to Romeo and Juliet even more appropriate. It concludes with a scene that, despite leaving almost everything to the imagination, has given me several nightmares, making me question whether I want to continue with the series.

I probably will, though, if only out of interest in some of the supporting characters, especially Alice, who I have found to be the most intriguing and likable character in the series. This book drops more hints about her back story that I’m hoping are explored more deeply in Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. I’m also curious as to whether Bella’s father Charlie will eventually be let in on the secret. I like the fact that New Moon allowed readers to focus a little bit more on other characters instead of all Edward, all the time, and Meyers’ more overt broaching of religious subjects encourages some deep discussion. But the book never really offers a clear condemnation of Bella’s reckless behavior, so parents should definitely be on the lookout for that. Neither Edward nor Bella wants the other hurt, but they ought to treat themselves with the same sort of care.

Edward Cullen Sets Hearts Aflutter in Twilight

I first heard of Twilight two or three years ago when a couple of my friends began gushing about how much they loved the series. Gradually, I noticed that more and more of my friends had read it, and with the release of the movie last year, anything connected with Twilight flew off the shelves of the kiosk where I was working. I heard comparisons to Harry Potter and followed along with discussions about its literary and spiritual merits. Finally, I decided that I needed to check it out for myself.

Twilight is the first book in the series. It’s narrated by Bella Swan, the nondescript daughter of divorced parents who has just left her emotionally immature mother in Arizona for her preoccupied father in dreary Forks, Washington. Bella is a bit of an oddball who doesn’t mingle naturally with others. She manages to make a few friends at her new school but is fairly bored by their interactions. The only thing that makes her new life bearable is her fascination with one particular group of students, a cluster of gorgeous, aloof siblings, one of whom sits next to her in science class. His name is Edward, and it doesn’t take long for him to turn into an all-encompassing obsession.

Bella has a few distinct traits. She’s described as having brown hair and pale features. She’s absurdly klutzy, constantly inflicting injury on herself. On the other hand, she’s industrious, a good student and a capable housekeeper who cheerfully takes care of all the household tasks, especially cooking. She’s also kind-hearted, despite being rather wrapped up in herself. On the whole, however, she’s not an especially well-defined character, and I get the impression that author Stephenie Meyer mostly intended for her readers to insert themselves into Bella’s shoes, to become her for the duration of the series. Because nobody, it seems, reads the books for Bella. They read it for Edward.

Edward Cullen is a 17-year-old with hard, alabaster skin, bronze hair and angelic features. He’s seductive, chivalrous and wholly devoted to the frail, plain Bella, who can’t understand why anyone as perfect as him would single out someone as average as her. To some extent, one could say that it was love at first sniff. No one in the world smells as beautiful to Edward as Bella does. Unfortunately, that makes their relationship Bella’s most dangerous circumstance yet, because Edward is a vampire. A vampire who has no intention whatsoever of giving into his thirst for Bella, but who suspects the best way to avoid that possibility is to stay away from her altogether. But Edward is just as deeply in love as Bella is, so abandonment isn’t that easy.

It’s easy to see the attraction of Edward, as well as the objections. On the plus side, here is a man who is never going to age physically. He’ll always be young and gorgeous. What’s more, he’s incredibly romantic and protective. And, at least at this point, his courtship with Bella is quite chaste. On the other hand, he’s about a century old, which makes his dalliance with Bella a tad creepy, especially when one considers the fact that he sneaks into her house at night, sometimes when even she isn’t aware of it. He’s also very condescending, and he doesn’t really offer Bella the chance to make decisions for herself.  Additionally, though he is always worried about Bella hurting herself, he drives like a maniac while she is in the car with him, laughing as he lets the spedometer creep up to twice the speed limit. 

Though the Harry Potter comparisons are what I most often hear, the similarities there are limited. Of course, Robert Pattinson plays Cedric in one film series and Edward in the other. Both series have stirred up considerable controversy. Both concern a supernatural population kept hidden from the greater public. Moreover, Bella’s attraction to Edward’s “family,” who in fact are not related to one another at all, feels similar to the delight Harry takes in the Weasley family. But Bella has parents of her own, and though they are separated, each clearly cares about her a great deal, so she’s hardly an orphan. Additionally, while J. K. Rowling’s world is full of color and inventive elements, Meyer’s is drab and shadowy, and melodramatic Twilight could sorely use a dose of Rowling’s humor. One might argue that both series are ultimately about one thing: love. But Harry Potter delves most deeply into the idea of sacrificial love, while Twilight is all about romance. A romance for which Bella may indeed sacrifice her life as she knows it, but the benefit, it seems, would be to her and Edward alone. This is a lot less like Harry Potter than it is like Romeo and Juliet. Bella and Edward are all wrong for each other, but they’re determined to have a go at it anyway.

While I understand why Edward is so appealing, Meyer lays the adulation on a little thick. Scarcely a page goes by in which Bella fails to mention some element of his perfection, and she quickly runs out of new ways to say it, so the novel starts to sound pretty repetitive. To be honest, I found myself much more interested in some of the side characters, particularly Edward’s bubbly, compassionate “sister” Alice, who is able to catch glimpses of the possible future, and warm, heroic Cullen patriarch Carlisle, who is the oldest of the bunch and has become so disciplined after centuries of practice that he is able to work as a surgeon without being tempted by the smell of human blood. He and the others in his family feast only on animal blood, making them less of a threat than just about any other vampires in the world. Nonetheless, not all members of the family have Carlisle’s self-control, so they still aren’t exactly safe, at least as long as Bella is human.

Going back to Harry Potter, that series is quite preoccupied with death, and so is Twilight. All of super-villain Voldemort’s actions are motivated by his desire to conquer death, and we see other characters toy with that prospect. Ultimately, the series seems to confirm headmaster Albus Dumbledore’s comment that there are things far worse than death, and at the moment, this is how Edward feels. But Bella desperately wants to bypass the natural order of things in order to become an equal to Edward, no longer a liability, no longer doomed to grow old while her true love remains young and vital. Bella is determined to be transformed into a vampire, despite Edward’s fear that becoming a vampire destroys one’s soul. This conflict finds no resolution in the first book, but the two points of view could create some interesting fodder for discussion.

I’m only halfway through the series myself. I’ll probably finish it, but I’m not committed to doing so. These are not characters who have seeped into my soul, and after two more books, I doubt they will be any more real to me than Lemony Snicket’s Baudelaire orphans - and at least those books were hilarious. Nonetheless, as I was reading, I couldn’t stop turning the pages. I was engrossed enough that I had to know what would happen next and impressed with the many positive qualities various members of the Cullen clan display. I wouldn’t recommend the series to children younger than high school, and I do think that parents would do well to read the books themselves so they can talk about some of their more unsettling elements; some worthwhile conversations could result. As for me, I’ll still take Cedric Diggory over Edward Cullen – and Neville Longbottom over Cedric Diggory – but I see no need to toss Edward on the bonfire.