film fatales #199: twilight (catherine hardwicke, 2008)

This is the twenty-sixth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 26 is called "Carter Burwell Week":

A movie’s score can have an incredible impact on the success of the film, contributing to the tone and atmosphere of a scene, while also connecting to an audience in such a visceral way that can elevate a viewer’s feelings of a story or a character and overall enjoyment of the film altogether. Carter Burwell is one of the top film composers of our time, scoring every Coen Brothers movie except one, all of Martin McDonagh’s films, three of Spike Jonze’s films, three of Todd Hayne’s films and many, many more. Although he has written many memorable and intoxicating scores and been nominated for three Oscars, he has yet to win the golden statue.

This week let’s honor a composer that has not been honored with a win by many of the most prestigious film awards and watch a movie featuring a score composed by Carter Burwell. Working with so many fantastic filmmakers, there’s no shortage of great films to choose from.

Before this challenge, I couldn't have told you who Carter Burwell was, but it turns out I've seen like 3 dozen of his movies, including favorites like Fargo and Three Kings. I didn't really notice the score in Twilight, which isn't necessarily a bad thing ... it wasn't intrusive.

Catherine Hardwicke directed the interesting Thirteen, which she co-wrote with Nikki Reed (who appears in Twilight as one of the vampires). There is some suggestion that the people involved in the movie didn't know if it would be a success (Kristen Stewart said later, "If you'd told me we were going to make five Twilights when we did the first? I would not have believed you.") The Twilight series of novels by Stephenie Meyer were enormously successful, and I'd think a big audience for the films would be guaranteed. And, in fact, Twilight hit over $400 million worldwide at the box office, leading to four sequels.

Kristen Stewart is usually the best thing in her movies, but I haven't found any of them to be great films, and she was awful in Spencer. Same with Robert Pattinson: he's usually good, his movies are usually OK (but The Lighthouse was awful). They make a good team here, but once again, Twilight isn't a great movie. I am not the audience for it, though, and clearly it connects with a lot of people. The romance between human Bella and vampire Edward is like a scene out of In the Mood for Love ... they are in love, but they can't do anything about it. Hardwicke pours on the smoldering intensity:

I'm glad I finally caught up with this phenomenon, although I'm not inspired to watch the rest of the series. The best I can say for Twilight is that it wasn't awful.