Bright Star

Jane Campion's Bright Star --about the Romantic poet John Keats and his romance with his young neighbor, Fanny Brawne-- surprised me. I expected gorgeous and provocative cineamatography, moody passion and brilliant dialog. I expected the frilly, sensual, temptestuos spirit of the romantic poets to be made palpable, visual, alive. But I didn't expect
to leave the theater truly grieving John Keats, who died so young of tuberculosis. I didn't expect that I would be able to imagine what might have been--the warm homey love he and Fanny could have shared in a small house in the English countryside. I could picture him delighting and doting on their children in between writing sessions. I could picture her entertaining guests and protecting his privacy. I wanted all that for them.

Of course, they never married. He was too poor at first, and then also too sick. Their romance is quite legendary--but for me it had always been something static, like a pretty little figurine, and something emblematic, one more accessory for a Romantic poet to have--the passionate love, the debilitating illness, the unacknowledged brilliance. Through Campion's great work, though, he became a real person to me. As did she.

It was a great, fun movie. It made me think about art and relationships in new ways. Fanny was an incredibly gifted and precocious seamstress--who designed and sewed all her clothes. This was a beautiful visual aspect of the movie and it also set up an interesting opposition between the male, intellectual, serious art of poetry and her own more craftsman, more female, less intellectually respected art. If only she could have used her craft to provide the income for the couple!

I found myself more sympathetic to what it would be like to be in that time period, with the restrictions on women and on relationships that the culture imposed.

There was also an interesting tension between Fanny Brawne and John Keats' best poet friend, Mr Brown. At first I thought their intense hatred of each other was simply funny, something flirty and rather inconsequential. But there was something deeper, more elemental to it-- a truer belief in the lover's part on actual love, versus the older poet's more cynical nature.

I guess I also loved the movie because it showed an incredibly sensual, passionate romance without any sex--gratuitous or otherwise. That took creativity and art to pull off.

I had thought of Keats as being another romantic like Shelley, who left a horrible mess in his wake as they pursued his own agenda in the name of his passions. But in this portrayal Keats seemed driven by ideals and virtues bigger than himself.

The tragedy, especially for Brawne, was that the ideal of romantic love was still not big enough. As she went to wander the heath, dressed all in black after his death, I had another wish--not only that they could have lived out their lives together--but that she could have had a deeper vision to sustain her, a truer hope for her to lodge her amazing spirit.