Time Machine

It's hard to think of a more sure-fire recipe for disaster than to try to portray the life and loves of a famous poet on screen.  Add period and setting (1818, England) and one conjures a certain deadly-dreadful Masterpiece Theatre fare, at its best embarassing (blasted heath, declaimed verse, heaving bosoms) and at its worst the cinematic equivalent of narcolepsy.  Yet Jane Campion, herself capable of creating such disaster (O, but to have the two hours of my life spent watching Portrait of a Lady returned to me!) has gotten away with it in Bright Star, her portrait of John Keats in love. 

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It's actually Fanny Brawne in love; we see Keats through the peculiarly intimate point of view of his chaste though impassioned lover, played with instant star intensity by Abbie Cornish.  And the movie is not so much about what you'd typically find in a historical biopic, as it is about what's left out.

Bright Star is focused on the interstices between the big stuff - the meaning of art, beauty, poetry and all that - and the hopelessly mundane: how a hem gets sewn, how tea is served, what exactly wind and light can do to a bedroom drape on an English afternoon.

For this reason - that it's a sincere attempt on its filmmaker's part to meet the world of Keats' poetry with a cinematic language of matching intensity - Bright Star is filled with ravishing images.  When Keats takes to the top of a tree to contemplate the sky, you feel nearly just as drunk on sumptuous physicality. 

The movie is essentially a time machine - a vehicle designed by an anthropological film poetess to take you to another time and place, so remote from our own as to seem truly otherworldly.

It is, of course, a movie that could easily inspire hatred.  Though it succeeds in avoiding Biopic Mawk for the most part (you can't have such a movie, unfortunately, without Keat's untimely tubercular cough) it's mostly gossamer - an ephemeral experience that could easily drive even the most dedicated art house/indie buff to seek out say, five minutes of Fast and Furious 4.

If on the other hand, you're interested in contemplating what a new book looked like in 1818 and how it was gift-wrapped, this could be for you.  Fans of perfect casting will also favor it.  Ben Whishaw as Keats is hot; Paul Schneider is an ideal big bearish buffoon of a romantic obstacle, and Edie Martin was born to be little Toots, a chubby fledgling pre-Raphaelite nymph.

It wouldn't hurt to have a deeply romantic streak.  And a taste for fashion.

If you're lucky, you first read Keats when you're young enough to embrace being that unashamedly carried away.  The film brings the music of his words to life again - as you watch Campion's imagery (Greig Fraser's work with Campion here is as exquisite as Coutard with Godard), the famous lines read aloud sing with the shock of the new.  It's oddly Zen, this butterfly wing of a movie: Bright Star takes you to the past and makes it very, very present.

Comments

[E.C. Henry]

Great review as always, Billy.

Haven't seen "Bright Star," but I was HOPING you'd comment how "Bright Star" stacks up against "Shakesphere in Love" and "Becoming Jane."

Thanks,

E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

[Laura Deerfield]

I was a total devotee of the Romantics when I was 17, a poet, "genius" and idealist. I still remember the feeling of being swept up by them, and it's the communication of that feeling via a work of art I am thinking of when I use the word "poetry"... I am very much looking forward to seeing Bright Star

[mernitman]

EC: I haven't seem JANE, but I can say that it's nothing like SHAKESPEARE - more like 180 degrees from, though it has moments that are funny in a similar self-aware way...

Laura: Then I think you'll have a good time!

[Alana]

I was on the brightstar-movie.com website and they have a contest with prizes from A Diamond is Forever and Montblanc for the most romantic letter or tweet. A great idea to get people writing again.

[Abigail]

Like Fanny's butterflies, I am myself changed:
The most sublimely exquisite film I have seen in years, near to perfection in its presentation of what IS the essence of Romance.
Transcendent.
Transforming.
The grandest conjure of mortal making.

I'm still reeling since having just seen it-- no, experienced it. I feel as though some part of me may have died from the ecstasy of the tragedy, the sensation of loss so terrifyingly real.

[Ben]

As a lover of Keats, I'm surprised I didn't hear about this one. His poem, "To Emma" is one of my all time favorites. It's too bad they didn't do a very good job in the movie making. I've read some short biographies on Keats and he seems like a really interesting person. I still might rent this one from the store though.

[Vintage Jewelry]

Very big movie! I like those times and actors game of Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw. All the movie is saturated of romantic impressions and sentimental purity. I love the movie from the first moment until the end! Thanks for the post.