Twilight

Coming down the escalator at the Loews Boston Common the other night, I was greeted by an unexpected sight: the entire lobby was filled with a snaking line of young women sitting on the floor. Without asking I knew immediately what was up: they were on line for the 12:01 am premiere of Twilight. I'd seen plenty of scenes like that of young men sitting in a long line, for The Dark Knight and Star Wars movies, but never such a collection of the fairer sex. It was immediately apparent what movie would be number one at the box office for that week.

Often when a movie is hugely popular, I will wait several weeks to see it while catching other fare that is more transitory in the theater. Twilight is going to be in theaters for months, most likely, but in this case I decided I wanted to see it as soon as possible, to surf the cultural buzz that would inevitably surround it. Love it or hate it, it was to be one of those "landmark" films that defined the tastes of 2008.

Since it was playing in all the theaters around Boston, I could see it by popping over to what has become my favorite movie venue later: The Entertainment Theaters 10 complex in nearby Leominster, which, I have learned, is pronounced LEM-un-ster (nothing around here is pronounced as written).

Leominster is favorite for a simple reason: it close-by and it is cheap. In five minutes I can be on Route 2 headed west, and the exit for the multiplex is only ten minutes more. A couple months ago, when I lived right next to a multiplex, this would have seemed ridiculously far away, but lately it feels like it right in my back yard. Best of all, the matinees are only five dollars and twenty five cents. My kind of place!

The price you pay for this is that the Leominster 10 is decidedly not one of those fancy millennial multiplexes with more amenities than Mount Olympus. Instead, it is vintage 1980's, when times were simple. Located amidst a maze of parking lots and strip malls just off Route 2, it has the classic outdoor box office, tiny lobby and low ceilings. Most of the auditoriums are small, with a single center aisle and traditional seating. In other words, it is the kind of place I am used to. Moreover it is staffed by a collection of surly-looking local teenagers with strange piercings who look like they have exhausted themselves hooking up with each other. All in all, a perfect place to see a movie like Twilight. I only wish I'd been able to catch the first-night evening premiere.

But there was still a nice crowd a week later, on the afternoon on the day after Thanksgiving---plenty of small packs of teenage girls, many of them no doubt on return visits. It is part of my philosophy of moviegoing to see a movie with the intended target audience. There is something ineffable and valuable about such a communal participation.

Many movies are shot in the Pacific Northwest, and they generally fall into two types: ones that simply use the scenery as a convenient backstop (sometimes filling in for other locales), and ones that explicitly address the landscape and the culture of the region. Twilight, to my delight, fell into the latter category, something that would have been known to me if I had read the book. It was nice for a film embrace the world of the Olympic Peninsula, and the long cultural history of Native American settled habitation of the region, which goes back farther than it does in any other area of the continent. In a sense, the Pacific Northwest is to Native Americans what New England is to white people. It was pleasing to see the Gothic ramifications of that so embedded into the story line.

In any story about vampires, the first question one must ask is "What are the vampires, really?". That is, what is the mundane shadow of the fantasy element. What does it represent in real life, as far as the obvious subtext? What is the hook of normal experience on which the fantasy hangs? In this case, it was clear that vampires point to alienated and Goth-oriented youth. Not original, or a stretch by any means, but fertile ground for a fresh telling of cinematic vampirism in a contemporary high school. I was enjoying the movie right from the start, for that very reason. I simply wanted to see where they took the concept.

One could write many words about the meaning of teenage desire, as it is told in the story. But I am not the person to do that. Instead I would recommend reading, say, Caitlin Flanagan's fine essay in The Atlantic for a woman's point of view regarding the fascination that the story (both book and movie) holds for teenage girls.

What has particularly stuck out for me in these Internet analyses are the ones by men, seeking to understand what makes Edward the vampire such an attractive character for women, especially teenage girls. As always, men tend to get it wrong, by the age old assumption that what makes a man attractive to a woman is the same thing that makes a woman attractive to a man. In other words, it was all in his looks---he is gorgeous and beautiful. The response one always gets from a woman is, "well, sure that doesn't hurt, but..." Collectively, the comments by men online simply proved how little men know about women.

Without asserting that I do know anything, I can possibly assert that I know slightly more than I used to (mostly by confession of ignorance). What stuck out at me about Edward's attractiveness to women was that his unambiguous expression of desire for Bella, the female protagonist. He wants her so much that he cannot hide it, although he tries to. His desire for her is bursting forth in his every action. Perhaps the most telling line of the movie in this regard is when he tells her, amidst the shelter of the emerald rain forest, "You are like my own personal brand of heroin." I could almost hear every girl in the audience gasp.

They wouldn't know, of course, that for a movie set in the Faulkneresque backroads of western Washington, just down the pike from Kurt Cobain's hometown, that the line has an extra special punch to it. At least he didn't say "meth."

In the end, there is not much plot to the movie, other than the swooning, and the restraint of desire. It came across as what it is---the first chapter in an installment. Personally I look forward to the next ones.