I think I am supposed to like Bright Star.  I am interested in John Keats, I loved Campion’s The Piano and I have a high tolerance for slow period pieces about love. But this film left me cold. Even the credits annoyed me. Keats deserves better.

Writer/director Jane Campion attempts a lush telling of the romance between 19^th century Romantic poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his neighbor, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). They meet a few years before his death at age 25.  Fanny is a gifted seamstress, and she proudly tells Keats that her work, unlike poetry, earns money.  Keats lives with and is supported by fellow poet Charles Armitage Brown (Paul Schneider). Fanny does not care for poetry and gives Keats’s Endymion only lukewarm reviews. But she soon changes her mind about both the man and his work, and their romance begins. She takes poetry lessons from Keats and pretends to read Homer and Milton. Friend Brown thinks Fanny is a flirt not to be taken seriously.  Fanny’s family likes Keats, but sees no future for the couple due to the poet’s poor financial prospects.  Keats and Fanny do not marry and endure separations due to his failing health. When they are together, they take long slow walks and stare at each other and the trees.

Ben Whishaw lacks the passion and charisma I would expect Keats to possess. I detested his performance as Sebastian in  Brideshead Revisted for many of the same reasons. He lacks charm and masculinity, and his Keats seems weak and inconsequential. He spends most of the film looking dour and reads Keats’s wonderful poems in a lugubrious manner. He has no chemistry with co-star Abbie Cornish. Cornish tries, but cannot overcome the script and her co-star. Her Fanny spends most of the film waiting for letters from Keats, crying in her room and talking in hushed tones. The bright spot in Bright Star is Paul Schneider. He has the charisma and energy Whishaw lacks.  Schneider seems to be in a different and better film than Cornish and Whishaw.  His Charles Armitage Brown is funny and charming, and Cornish and Schneider do have chemistry. Their arguments about Keats are passionate and deep, and their heated discussion in the woods over Brown’s valentine card to Fanny provides the film with a much needed spark.

Bright Star looks beautiful, much like The Piano. The scene involving Fanny and a room full of butterflies at the height of her romance with Keats is lovely and skillfully shot, but creepy. The dead butterflies being swept out of the room when the romance is not going well is also creepy. But nothing in the film justifies this level of angst. We do not really see the passion and love between these characters, or see what is compelling (except for the poems) about either character.  

The film takes it name from the poem written for Fanny. The scene where Keats recites the poem (“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art”) to Fanny is the closest we come to seeing real feeling between the characters.  The film needed more scenes like this and a better Keats. For most of the film, the dialogue and Whishaw’s performance elicited laughter from the large audience during a preview screening. If you stay for the credits, you will be furthered tortured by hearing Whishaw mumble Ode to a Nightingale. Yes, it will make your heart ache, but not for the right reasons. I remember when I first read Ode on a Grecian Urn  how thrilled I was by the phrase “Forever panting, and forever young.” Unfortunately, Bright Star contains none of this thrill.

Bright Star.  Directed by Jane Campion.  Abbie Cornish (Fanny Brawne),  Ben Whishaw (John Keats),  and  Paul Schneider (Charles Armitage Brown).  Apparition, 2009.

 

Gail sees a movie appears every Wednesday.

 

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