With a little over a week to go before the premiere of the highly anticipated film The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, director Bill Condon has been in deep discussions with Twilighters everywhere about the topic of relationships and love. In a recent interview with Elle, the British director opened up about some of the most touching and interesting things he learned from making the movie.
“I think a lot about love, and how fleeting it can be,” he said. “I shot the opening sequence for the movie a few years ago, and I was reminded of how much the experience of making a love story differs from making a war story. It’s so sad when the world makes that distance, that dissociation, between people in love. And yet, I still see couples around me who are in love, who are passionately in love, and who will take that love to the grave. It’s a funny thing; we have more in common with our dogs and our cats than we do with some of our closest friends.”
Dogs Aren’t Affected By Attachment Issues
When Condon was asked what he thinks about human relationships and marriage, he first mentioned attachment issues. Specifically, dogs don’t have these problems because they’re naturally attached to their owners. Also, Condon elaborated, “Attachment issues are something that often plague human beings. We struggle to relate to people on a personal level, and so we often end up relating to them on an emotional level. We get blocked off from having a purely intimate relationship with another human being, and so we look for intimacy with animals, or with a part of an animal, and that’s why we connect with dogs. So, in a way, making a love story with Bella and Edward was about overcoming our own human limitations. It was about breaking down those walls [that are] between us, and about giving love another go.”
Sexually Transmitted Diseases Aren’t Life-threatening
Another point Condon made was that people who are very much into their careers often don’t get around to having sex that often, if at all. In fact, he joked, “I think we’re slowly realizing as a culture that STDs aren’t necessarily life-threatening. So when Bella and Edward finish each other’s sentences in the film, they aren’t necessarily talking about genital warts or crabs.” He continued, “I think a lot of people are scared of STDs. They’re afraid of getting infected, or afraid that their partner will get infected. There’s also a lot of shame around sex and sexuality, because for so long, it was thought that STDs were something that you got just from having too much sex. It wasn’t something that most people talked about, or about which most people were worried. So I think that by breaking down those kinds of taboos, it’ll be a great step forward.”
The Need To Love One Another
When asked what he thinks about marriage and committed relationships, Condon said that they’re incredibly important. In fact, he went on to say, “I think that when we really start to believe in love, and understand it as a force for good, only then can we start to think about how we might apply it to our own lives, and to the world around us. For instance, I’ve always believed that if more people started to love each other, it would be a force for good in the world. It would give people hope, and show them that even though the world can be a dangerous and hateful place, if we all start to love each other, the world could be a beautiful place. That’s the sort of thing that I think about, as well as about love in general.”
Condon’s words of wisdom, and our own advice, is to love each other. Not just friends, but family, strangers and even animals (if you feel comfortable doing so). It’s never easy choosing partners with whom to share your life, but at least now, you know what you’re getting into. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 finally gives fans what they want—a satisfying conclusion to this epic love story. It’s unfortunate that it had to come at such a cost, but at least this way, we can all find some closure.