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It is a visually and rhythmically stunning exploration into the shyly romantic world of 19th century England. The featured love affair, so constant and yet troublesome, inspires Keats’ quest for professional greatness and happiness in life. The film is infused with the visceral poeticism and lyricism that may otherwise be bound within words and Victorian language.
Bright Star begins with a beautiful sequence of a string being threaded through a needle, which fleetingly appears to be a lit match. The camera smoothly follows the creation of a delicate garment so sheer that the white sunlight filtering through the window shines through it. From the onset, the screen sets the stage for a tale of precarious and fragile beauty.
Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) shine in their roles as star-crossed lovers to rival Romeo and fair Juliet. Without the canonized intrusion of meddlesome Montagues and Capulets, Keats and Fanny entangle themselves in their own web; one which immobilizes them in steadfast love despite reality’s confines and penchant for tragedy. Bright Star is a story of commitment to being an artist, for Keats cannot possibly marry Fanny with such few riches. However, it is even more so a story of belief in the absoluteness, and inescapability, of love in love’s fabled presence (”the holiness of the heart’s affections,” as spoken by Wishaw’s Keats).
And, much like the Romantic poetry of Keats’ age, Bright Star is infused with such natural splendor that the verses which tip-toe the film and even the action onscreen are inextricable from the beauty surrounding the characters. It is almost as if Keats is writing his celebrated lines on screen, guided by the film-world around him. The lush English countryside seems full of agency, with every blossom and shriveled fall leaf, each butterfly and strong breeze pointing to the film’s core action. The scene in which Fanny reads a lovelorn letter from Keats and falls onto a ground pillowed with purple blossoms is fanciful and full of a sensation so powerful that I found myself clutching my heart.
Despite a knee-jerk judgment of the film as being perhaps overly sentimental, maybe a little bit predictable (its over-simplification reading, ‘dreamer seamstress falls for dreamer poet’), Campion crafts a masterpiece much to the likes of Fanny’s frothy gowns and striking collars, or, even more so, much to the likes of Keats’ poems themselves.
Wishaw stares at cherry blossoms and perches thoughtfully beneath moss-mangled trees, and yet these actions do not come off as laughable and cliché. Instead, he seems genuine, and wonderfully aware of the natural beauty that surrounds him so much so that he is inspired by it all. The soft focus of the camera and the brilliance of color within scenes is almost dream-like, more beautiful than anything we know in this tech-crazed age. The shots filmed from within the flowery thicket remind us of the filmic atmosphere of a love so powerful it might drown us, and our lovers, beneath it.
All the sighing and swooning aside, Keat’s closest and most brusque friend, Charles Brown (Paul Schneider) exists as a stark reminder of the world beyond romantic escapism. Indeed, lovers may succeed in creating such a world, but it still remains in constant opposition to the rushing, and often crushing reality beyond it.
Addressing this idea, Campion exercises extreme restraint in the filming and pacing of Bright Star. The film acquires the rhythm of an ephemeral, yet striking sonnet. It would be hard to forget the particularly poignant scene in which the luminescent butterflies that once filled Fanny’s love-swollen room are being swept limply into a dustpan. The film’s tempo is swift, never lingering in one moment for too long, yet resonant. The first kiss between the two lovers beneath a canopy of spring-flushed trees stands out as the film’s most indulgent. The camera lingers, almost intrusively, on close-ups of lips and tender touches. Just as the audience begins to feel a flush on their cheeks, fiery haired and charming younger sister to Fanny, ‘Toots’ (Edie Martin), prances in and changes the scene entirely. This awareness to emotional restraint, coupled with the technical mastery and beauty of the film, is its saving grace that rescues it from eye-rolling sappiness. The love between these two romantics seems caste from innocence; however, it is one many of us may long for.
I left the theater in tears, despite having entered it knowing the fate of the just barely 25 year old John Keats. I knew what to expect, of course knew where we were headed! I am certain I tried my best to keep a defensive distance in order to see to the dryness of my cheeks at curtain call. But alas, in usual romantic fashion, I was swept away by the beauty of the film, in both the heavenly aesthetics and the exalted words of love and sensuality with which the film is framed. Jane Campion triumphs in adding Keats and Fanny to a long list of love’s great allies.
And with such success in marrying form and function, that is, relaying the beauty and power of words through stunning beauty and power of visuals and performances, Bright Star just might be a love story fit for anyone’s adoration, romantic or not.
Written by Dana Covit
Bright Star is currently playing at The Charles Theater.
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