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John Keats believes that if poetry does not come as naturally as leaves to a tree, then it better not come at all.
Writer-director Jane Campion seems to believe that if breathtaking bliss and crushing anguish do not come naturally to a tale of first love, then she and we better not come at all.
- Starring: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider.
- Rating: PG for thematic elements, some sensuality, brief language and incidental smoking.
- Web site: www.brightstarthemovie.com
"Bright Star," her story about the romance between Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his flirtatious, fashion-forward neighbor Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), will leave you swooning. The director of "The Piano," however, relies on few of the usual tricks -- no cameras circling dizzily or cranked up symphonic music that cries with its stringed instruments.
Campion uses exquisitely chosen words; handwritten notes and letters; flowering or barren trees, gardens and fields; butterflies which symbolically flutter or fall; meaningful glances; brief kisses; and chaste embraces.
In 1818, when the story begins, we meet the penniless poet Keats. A stack of his books sits unsold in a shop, his brother has been stricken with tuberculosis, and Keats is living with a close, equally artistic-minded friend named Charles Brown (Paul Schneider).
Fanny, who resides with her widowed mother and younger brother and sister, is a stylish "minx" to him, boasting about her beautiful hand-designed and sewn gowns. But when she demonstrates kindness toward Keats' ailing brother and a sincere desire to understand poetry, his attention and affection begin to flourish.
As Fanny's mother (Kerry Fox from Campion's "An Angel at My Table") says in a reflection of the time: "Mr. Keats knows he cannot like you; he has no living and no income." That does not douse the spark between the pair, but Keats falls ill and the couple face obstacles even their love cannot defeat.
"Bright Star," written by Campion based on Keats' poems, letters and an Andrew Motion biography of the Romantic poet, weaves Keats' own words into the dialogue. Fanny, for instance, reads the opening of "A Thing of Beauty" from "Endymion" and we witness the birth of "Ode to a Nightingale" and hear it over the closing credits.
Campion largely avoids those deadly traps of having the audience watch someone write or think or muse. She gives us a flavor of the period and attitudes toward artistic pursuits and pastimes, marriage and women. When Keats hears that a friend fathered a child out of wedlock, he naively says, "I had no notion of a love affair."
Most of all, Campion uses nature much as Keats did to paint striking pictures and moods. She also relies on a stellar cast led by the soulful Whishaw, vibrant Cornish (generating deserved Oscar buzz) and a potbellied Schneider as the Irishman Brown, who engages in a tug of war over Keats with Fanny.
As Fanny's siblings, Edie Martin and Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who played Liam Neeson's drummer son in "Love Actually," are quiet witnesses to the love blossoming in their midst. Young Edie, who had never acted before, is a particular delight and discovery.
"Bright Star," somewhat frustratingly, drops in some background information about Keats' family and makes a passing mention of his one-time medical studies. Instead, the focus is on the woman who inspired the poem "Bright Star" and the man who loved her from near and far, in sickness and in health, and with wonder and wordplay.
Opens today at the Manor theater in Squirrel Hill.
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