Bright Star – Film Review

Jane Campion Directs Romance About Poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne

Oct 6, 2009

Bright Star, Jane Campion's film about the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, is a stunning period romance that appeals to the heart and to the eyes.

Writer-director Jane Campion’s Bright Star focuses on Romantic poet John Keats’ doomed love affair with Fanny Brawne. In this period romance, Campion creates a visually rich backdrop that informs Keats and Fanny’s passionate and chaste relationship. That world is as complex and sensual as the love story itself, and Campion’s film is, as Keats himself wrote, “a thing of beauty.”

Campion, director of The Piano (1993), is known for challenging Hollywood conventions. Bright Star does not disappoint, depicting a romance characterized by social constraint and physical restraint. The film owes much of its passion to the couple’s unfulfilled desires and idealized love. Bright Star is a romance about Romantic Love (capitalized in keeping with the Romantics’ usage) that engages the audience’s senses and sentiments.

In 1818, the talented but struggling Keats (Ben Whishaw), while living with his friend Charles Brown (Paul Schneider), meets 18-year-old Fanny (Abbie Cornish). The two are immediately drawn to each other. Fanny, with her love of dancing, flirting, and daring, hand-designed fashions, is a “minx” who intrigues Keats. Fanny, for her part, is attracted to Keats’ intensity, conveyed through his poetry and a devotion to his dying brother.

Both are artists of their respective, gendered worlds. Keats’ medium is poetry, and his male coterie sees his value in his work; Fanny’s medium is textiles, dismissed by Brown as frivolous. But the two find in each other kindred spirits who seek beauty and perfection. They fall in love: with each other, with the possibilities of a life together, and with love itself.

Their relationship faces numerous obstacles both personal and social. Fanny’s mother (Kerry Fox) reminds her: “Mr. Keats knows he cannot like you; he has no living and no income.” Mr. Brown competes with Fanny for Keats’ love and poetic soul. And while convention doesn’t stop the two lovers, Keats’ illness and death separates them. Although history reveals the relationship’s outcome, the film’s conclusion offers a bittersweet testament to the hope that love conquers all.

Bright Star Cast Features Memorable Performances by Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw

Cornish, whose previous films include Candy (2006) and Stop-Loss (2008), offers an incandescent performance. She’s utterly believable as a young woman experiencing the joys and sorrows of first love. Her Fanny is frank and willful, with a strong sense of her own worth – absolutely necessary, as those around her dismiss her desires and her self. Whether exchanging covert glances with Whishaw or expressing heartbreak over their situation, Cornish’s performance feels unforced, authentic, and thoroughly modern.

Whishaw’s sensitive, boyish charm recalls his performance in Brideshead Revisited (2008). With his slight, pale appearance and soulful performance, Whishaw occasionally risks becoming a Romantic stereotype. But his Keats escapes predictability, thanks to Wishhaw’s exchanges with Schneider and his playful demeanor when in the presence of Fanny’s younger siblings (Thomas Sangster and Edie Martin).

The supporting performances enhance rather than overshadow Whishaw and Cornish. Schneider convincingly blusters as Keats’ friend and Fanny’s rival. Fox, who worked with Campion in An Angel at My Table (1990), is subtle as a mother who reluctantly supports her daughter’s willingness to risk a family scandal. Thomas Sangster and Edie Martin offer naturalistic, lightly humorous performances that are neither too contemporary nor artificially formal.

Campion’s screenplay, based on Keats’ writings and Andrew Motion’s biography, luxuriates in language, using Keats’ poetry to punctuate key moments. Reading “A Thing of Beauty” raises Fanny’s interest in Keats. The lovers read aloud “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” an intimate moment sexier than most conventional bedroom scenes. In a fitting response to the film’s climax, Whishaw recites “Ode to a Nightingale” over the closing credits.

The film’s cinematography, by the talented Greig Fraser, also appeals to the senses. Shots and scenes are beautifully framed: a tree’s seasonal transformation; a blooming lavender field; a close-up of clasped hands; and captured butterflies that flourish, then die. These poetic images, often filmed in natural light and saturated color, don’t merely symbolize the lovers. They celebrate the beauty in the images themselves.

Bright Star is an intelligent, aesthetic examination of love. The passion that emerges between Whishaw and Cornish is matched, even exceeded, by the film’s nuanced writing and craftsmanship. The film is gorgeous to look at and a delight to listen to. That Bright Star’s lingering pleasures are found in the film’s design as well as its performances is a tribute to Campion’s vision and the inspiration of Keats’ poetry.

The copyright of the article Bright Star – Film Review in Romantic Films is owned by Debra Peterson. Permission to republish Bright Star – Film Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.