tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

Starring: Ben Whishaw, Abbie Cornish, Paul Schneider, Thomas Sangster, Samuel Barnett
Director: Jane Campion
Release Date: October 15, 2009
Running Time: 119 min
MPAA Rating: PG
Distributor: Jan Chapman Pictures, BBC Films, Hopscotch Productions

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Read John Keats' poetry, a nineteenth century English poet in his mid-twenties, and you'll have a better understanding of the approach director Jane Campion has taken in recreating the last years of his short lived life (he died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five). Campion ("The Piano"), like Keats' vast body of work, is meticulously dedicated to precision and beauty that happens to spring out of nowhere. A majority of "Bright Star's" scenes take on a life of their own, forming its beauty, structuring its own meaningfulness and creating images that, if appreciated, should remain in memory for quite sometime.

Circumstances arise out of nature to create stunning glimpses of visual poetry. A woman collapsing sweetly, full of romantic swelling, into a luscious green garden scattered about with lavender is the quintessential image of ravishing romance. But the endless flakes of snow that come crashing down elegantly on a bare branch of a tree, is a perfect example of Campion's poetic direction. Her filmmaking is unforced, unlike her narrative, naturally depicting the tranquil and subtle scenic grandeur of England and morphing it to resemble dream-like imagery.

At one point Keats (Ben Whishaw), who is staying in Hampstead, England with fellow poet and friend Charles Brown (Paul Schneider), tells Brown "poetry has to come without being forced." Keats' poetry is much superior to Brown's and is unforced beyond means. That is because once Keats lays eyes on fashion aficionado Fanny Brawne (Abby Cornish) he is immediately imprisoned to her beauty. So strong is the attraction to her that Keats becomes tightly swollen, unable to express his true emotion outwardly but easily instructing his thoughts and feelings to be written down on paper.

Excavating into the soul of Mr. John Keats can be looked at as an irreverent task. Campion finds herself surrounded by deeply hidden passions which she is never fully able to exploit and exhibit them. Maybe they are too intimate to Mr. Keats and innate. Only he can consciously express them to represent their full-throbbing meaning.

The similarities between both Keats and Fanny can be recognized instantly; the two are both creators (he of poetry and she of fashion); and both lost a parent at a young age (he his mother and she her father). Keats and Fanny seem like a perfect match to dedicate to one another their profound love for each other. However the film lacks the excruciating romanticism, feeling detached at most times from their infatuation with the other.

But there are immoveable objects that stand in the way of love. And "Bright Star" realizes an individualistic account of passionate love working against the brute facts, disabling any future outlooks the relationship might have possessed. Death may have been evident, even foreseeable by Keats who happened to write numerous poems about facing death. Tuberculosis tortured his family, causing early deaths to both his younger brother and mother. Keats may have coherently accepted the fact of concealing his love physically to Fanny because of this disease plaguing his family; he wouldn't want to leave her in pain but he was overexcited by her beauty that he confessed his love physically soon before his diagnosis of the disease. By the time he met Fanny in 1819 he was obsessed with her so much so that he entered a period of poetic creativity that was so astonishing in its productivity.

The film's acting resonates deep. Whishaw brings the distraught persona of a man helplessly in love to full scope while still hinging onto that discontentment obscured within Keats' soul. Abby Cornish's Fanny brilliantly matches his emotions by ways of putting on an authoritative approach, seeming to be in total command of the situation until tragedy descends upon her resulting in an abrupt wakening from an ideal reality.

Instead of our emotions being crushed to obliteration by the awfulness offered to our two main characters, we find ourselves going through the ritualistic circumstances with an absolute alertness of what and will follow in the film's narrative (despite it being a true story). The script written by Campion turns out to be steeply buried in the traditionally programmed romantic dramas and, strangely, influenced by them. "Bright Star" tries to morph and condense a man and woman's immense yearning to replicate an onscreen drama. What the two have encountered is beyond our vision and can only be found in Keats' own inscriptions which happen to be supremely personal and harmoniously akin to a Mozart's serenade. Any representation of Keats' yearning turns out to be bogged down, finely in-tuned with the run-of-the-mill romantic drama.

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