Bright Star
Bright Star is a strange little movie, and typical Campion — it’s ravishing to look at, you can nearly smell the things in every shot (bread, rained-on linen), and apparent anachronisms don’t distract the viewer, but instead give the material a zap of energy.
The film follows the love affair of John Keats and Fanny Brawne, and for the first half, it is a consumptive gasp from turning into Lives of the Romantics: The Williamsburg Years — but it doesn’t. Leads Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish do a good job of grounding the action and reminding us that every relationship, no matter how storied in history, started somewhere relatively quiet. A couple of leitmotifs let us feel like we really know these people (particularly Fanny’s siblings, who act almost as familiars, attending on her), and the atmosphere that Campion creates of springtime hope is all the more impressive given that we know how this is going to end.
Once that endgame begins, the movie loses its way with a series of too-long, soggy scenes in which John and Fanny quote his poetry back and forth to each other, press their hands against the bedroom wall that divides them, and gaze tragically into each other’s eyes. It’s still gorgeous to look at, and it’s not uninteresting to see how the final conflict plays out in the acting — if he’s going to die anyway, should John just stay with Fanny, or go ahead to Italy to let his friends feel like they’ve helped him? — but the circumstances of Keats’s demise are not exactly the best-kept secret in literature.
And then Fanny cuts her hair off and walks the heath, in the snow, reciting a Keats poem and weeping.Campion could have saved that bit by cutting to credits after the affecting wide shot of Fanny crossing a lea and her teenage brother dutifully trailing her, but she didn’t, so the movie squanders its promising beginning with a conclusion straight out of a term paper.
Give it a spin anyway; it really is shot so beautifully. Its only nod is for Best Costume Design, but it should have gotten some recognition for Cinematography as well.
Death Race 35, Sarah 23; one of these days I will finish another category, but until then, still only 6 of 24 completed
Tags: Abbie Cornish Ben Whishaw Fanny Brawne Jane Campion John Keats movies Oscars 2010 Death Race poetry in something resembling motion
I liked it!
That’s my insightful criticism. I watched Bright Star and An Education on consecutive days and just felt that Bright Star quietly reached the place that An Education strived for and failed to reach, despite all its speeches– that feeling of first love that seems all-important and bigger-than-life to those involved. But I do have to add the caveat that I watched them both at work, which automatically makes me more forgiving to a movie because hey, I’m watching a movie at work! And Bright Star made me weep at my desk, which was rather embarrassing.
I agree with you that An Education didn’t do what it wanted to, quite, but I’m not sure we’re meant to think that she’s in love in An Education — just that she’s attracted to the experience and doesn’t know what else to tell herself about it. I may have derived that from the memoirist’s article about it, though.
I liked Bright Star, too, despite everything. And if the idea was to capture that experience of first love, both for those in it (all-consuming), and those observing it (overwrought and perspective-free), mission accomplished.
I completely agree that the walking-through-snow-reciting-dead-lover’s-verse thing just clanked. Freaking dreadful. And that cut would have been so easy to make!
On the other hand, I left the cinema on a warm sunny afternoon feeling cold and consumptive, so the flick had an effect on me. Perhaps not the one intended, but, hey.
In other news, is Ben Whitshaw the smallest actor ever? Abbie Cornish looked like a fullback next to him, and she’s a small person her ownself!
I think Cornish should have been nominated here. She was headstrong but subtle about it, and you could see the effect the poems eventually had on her. Also, I never was a poetry fan (with a few exceptions), but this film did make me appreciate it. Finally, as with The Piano (my favorite Jane Campion movie), Campion shows a sure touch with handling the children – they’re both believable as children, not as ‘movie children.’
I did think Campion was trying to avoid her usual Big Romantic Style, and things like the walking through the snow scene were probably lapses into that style. Also, Whishaw wasn’t as compelling to me as Cornish was. Overall, though, I thought this was quite good.
Personally, I like how Dan Simmons interprets the story in “Hyperion”, wherein evil robots from the future clone Keats as part of their plan to kidnap Jesus Christ.
I just saw this movie last night and… kind of hated it. It was beautifully shot, and the costumes were great and looked just as strikingly homemade as they were meant to. (Was it just me, or did Fanny make herself, like, 3 of the same exact dress in different colors? Might’ve just been me.) But I just couldn’t bring myself to give a damn about either John or Fanny. She was only 18 when their love affair started, I know, and so the obnoxiousness and melodrama are probably true-to-life. And like you said, being both all-consuming and overwrought is an appropriate portrayal of youthful first love, but I found it heavy on the overwrought and light on the sympathetic.
And a-fucking-men on the Snowy Mourning Poetry Recital.
Two other things: “Fanny Brawne walked the heath for blah blah blah” at the end. Yeah, I’m sure she did some heath-walking and all, but she also got married and had kids, so shut up and stop making it sound like she lived the rest of her life in despair. And how about that ghastly music over the end credits nearly drowning out Ben Whitshaw’s lovely reading of “Ode to a Nightingale”? Ew. Every now and then there’d be a pause in the music and I could hear him properly and it was lovely. Then the music would start again.
I really wanted to like this movie, so in my disappointment I’m probably harsher toward it than is fair.
You and me both, Suzanne. I looked forward to Bright Star for MONTHS, missed it during its two-night stint at the indie rep, and then rented it, all full of anticipation…. and nearly died from the boredom. Beautifully shot, beautiful scenery, beautiful costumes, but the long, long, fraught, EmoRomantic lingering closeups of the leads as they (much! too! slowly!) fell in love drove me bats.
There are ways to make a slow, gracefully paced, romantic costume flick, even if you know the sad ending; I didn’t think this was it, much though I’ve enjoyed Jane Campion’s work in the past.
@ Granger LOL. I had the same thought. Keats does have that “tragic romantic figure” aura down pat (sorry, I’m more of a Blake fan).
I loved this movie. I mean, yes, a lot of that love is because it looked like my favorite commercial ever (for chocolate milk, I think, involving two pale, red-haired people in a fancy chocolate shop), all pastel and dreamy, but also because I felt like I was falling in love too. Not with (the admittedly super-talented) Ben Whitshaw or Abbie Cornish, but…I don’t know. Just like Attica said, I left the theater feeling totally affected. Like I came out of the movie having witnessed both the awesome parts and the heartbreaking parts of caring for other human beings, but being excited to go out and do so anyway, you know? It was a genuinely pleasurable experience, seeing this in the theater.
… apparent anachronisms don’t distract the viewer, but instead give the material a zap of energy.
I want to agree with this, but I found the touches of anachronism in The Piano distracting in the extreme; I think they were the straw that broke the back of the camel of my patience with Campion. The music Holly Hunter played sounded like Michael Nyman when it could have sounded like Schumann, or something, and it kept throwing me out of the picture. By the time the movie rolled around to Holly Hunter’s 19th-c. bionic finger, I was really, really done. If Bright Star is typical of Campion’s work in that way, perhaps it’s best that I’ve missed it so far. (I liked Portrait of A Lady quite a lot, although the pace is more or less glacial. To say I think The Piano over-praised is putting it ridiculously mildly.)
I loved it. I can definitely see the things that people have mentioned as criticisms, but I was completely caught up in the story. I bawled at the end.
Did everyone stay seated throughout the credits? In my theatre, no-one moved or spoke; we were all transfixed by Ben Whishaw reciting “Ode to a Nightingale”.
I think you have to be “half in love with death” to enjoy the second half of this movie.
I’m not, and didn’t.
Re: Sandman
Bravo to your Piano criticisms. Campion’s neo-romantic anachronisms and excesses annoy me something chronic! However, if you’re interested in the text that calls Campion’s Best Original Screenplay Oscar into question, try to get hold of “The Story of a New Zealand River” by Jane Mander (1920).
Campion has been quite open about how she began a screenplay for the novel several years before it became “The Piano,” but didn’t like the way the main character responded to her situation – in other words she was quite 19thC about it all and, you know, didn’t play minimalist music on the beach and exchange sex for her piano, etc.
The novel isn’t brilliant, but it really captures the time and practical considerations the character has to make within her society.
I haven’t seen Bright Star yet, but the comments above have confirmed my suspicions. Also, I once spoke to an Australian academic who was advising Campion on Keats during the initial writing of the screenplay and she was fairly scathing of Campion’s take on Fanny and John. In particular her complete refusal to consider that John might have preferred to go to Italy with the boys. But anyway, that was just what someone said at a conference.
(Was it just me, or did Fanny make herself, like, 3 of the same exact dress in different colors? Might’ve just been me.)
@Suzanne M: I haven’t seen the movie yet, but if that’s what you thought you saw, I can almost guarantee that that is, indeed what you saw – and it’s a tribute to the costume designer/person who made that decision, because it is ABSOLUTELY in keeping with the kind of homedressmaking that women did, for centuries.
Even once sewing manuals started being written (by various incarnations of A Lady) for the benefit and education of servants, parsons’ wives, the lower (and middle) classes, the instructions involve “take an old bodice and pick it to pieces”/”prick through the seams of an old bodice onto a piece of paper”. Paper patterns as we know them weren’t available at the period in which the movie was set, so a woman who made her own dresses would be very likely to make multiples of a dress she owned that already worked for her (in terms of cut, fit, etc.). And maybe even if it didn’t – just because you might have to do your own* sewing didn’t necessarily mean that you were good at it, or that you liked it.
So extra bonus points for that bit of realism.
*Yes, dressmakers were omnipresent, but their wages could cost as much as half again what the material cost. That doesn’t mean they were well-paid, either; many seamstresses had to supplement their earnings with prostitution, or starve. There were a LOT of women competing for those seamstress jobs, and it served to depress the market. They were competing with comfortable middle-class women, as well, since it was considered Morally Improving for women to save money by doing the sewing themselves.
You’re right, Sars, about what An Education was striving for being more about the attraction of a different life than about love- and I think I might have loved it if I had been 18 when I saw it instead of 30! It made me sad that it didn’t resonate with me the way I wanted it to, and honestly that might be more my own fault than the movie’s. And for this movie it wasn’t that I cared so much about the characters, it was just a really nice portrayal of the time period and situation- well-executed, in my mind.
And yes, Attica, I do believe Ben Whishaw is a tiny person. My carpool buddies and I came up with a nickname for him (… is that weird?) to match his British smallness and lightness and also because we figured as Americans we’d never be able to give his last name justice. It went from Ben Wish, to Ben Wh–, and finally settled on Ben *blowing noise*. Like you’re blowing out a candle. It greatly amused us but I can’t say why; many things are amusing at 6:30 in the morning that wouldn’t normally be.
@NZErin: The film also edits out Keats’s concurrent snuggling with Isabella what’s-her-face, which is convenient.
@Sarah D. Bunting: I didn’t know that! Keats must have been a rather spindly dude, or at least frail, what with the tuberculosis and all, but damn if he didn’t take advantage of what little time he had on earth.
Kristina: It was generally thought, in the 19th century, that people with tuberculosis were more highly sexed than those who didn’t have it. More power to them, if they could carry on whilst having respiratory difficulties (except, of course, for the fact that TB is contagious …)
Apropos of nothing really, since I haven’t seen the movie, but I visited Keats’s house last year and although (and possibly because) it was a little rough around the edges, I have never been so affected by a ‘house museum’ . It felt weirdly as if he had just died and touching the stair railing really gave me the shivers (in a good way). I guess his story is so affecting and being surrounded by some of his worldly possessions and writings really made it feel immediate. I highly recommend for any fans. Its near Primrose Hill in London if I remember correctly.
La BellaDonna: That (about the clothing) is really interesting, and of course it makes perfect sense. I don’t sew if I can avoid it, generally, but I once re-sized a t-shirt using a well-fitting t-shirt as a pattern and it worked really nicely. If I had to make most (or, god forbid, all) of my own clothing, I could definitely see doing something like that pretty often. It might not lead to the most interesting wardrobe ever, but it’d make the process faster and easier, and hopefully end with well-fitting results.
So, yeah, kudos indeed to the costume designer.
What I loved about this film was that it was really about literature in a way the literary biopics rarely are. For me it captured the mood and feeling of Keats’ poetry visually, in the dialogue, the music, the whole shebang. I recently watched the BBC miniseries on Byron. Byron wrote a hell of a lot of stuff, but if this movie was to be believed I’m not quite sure how he managed it. You never saw the guy put a pen to paper. Bright Star seemed much more about the real, hard work of writing.
Cornish was remarkable and to my mind deserved an Academy Award nomination. She gave dignity to what might otherwise have been a silly girl, a her grief was to me quite moving.
@NZErin: “…she began a screenplay for the novel several years before it became “The Piano,” but didn’t like the way the main character responded to her situation – in other words she was quite 19thC about it all and, you know, didn’t play minimalist music on the beach and exchange sex for her piano, etc.”
Imagine! A character being the product of her times! Tsk. Damned inconvenient, that.
@LaBD: I’ve never been able to work out the chicken-and-egg dimension of what I understand of attitude to TB in the 19th century. Would Violetta and Mimi (oh, for example) have been considered highly sexed *because* they came down with TB, or did TB cause them to become more readily aroused? Was TB taken as a signifier of sexual freedom, a consequence of it, or its cause? Nerdy minds want to know. (Well, okay, maybe just the one does.)