Cast: Abbie Cornish, Ben Wishaw

Director: Jane Campion

Screenplay: Jane Campion

Running time: 1 hr 59 mins

Genre: Drama



CRITIQUE:


Deconstruct Bright Star and we have very familiar elements on our hands. It’s a British nineteenth-century-set period drama crossed over with a biopic of a literary icon, with a central romance between a poet and his strong-willed woman of inspiration. Expect flouncy frocks, a fusillade of upper-class accents and upstairs-and-downstairs class conflict – and blame those endless Jane Austen never-ending adaptations and Merchant Ivory prestige productions for making these elements de rigueur to the many archetypal British films. Jane Campion’s newest cinematic flourish understands these elements, and for that Bright Star very nearly trundles into that well-worn path. Except that Campion is unprepared to compromise her vision. Eschewing rudiments that suffocate many starchy period dramas (although its first half-hour introduces us with an obligatory local town-hall dance) and common biopic tropes, Campion instead focuses her narrative perspective not on the poet himself, John Keats, but rather on Fanny Brawne, a neighbouring seamstress turned love object. This is a point-of-view so wisely chosen, putting the heartbeat of the film on the very source of inspiration that breathed life to a poet’s being.


One may easily gripe on Bright Star’s slow-burning and overly-familiar affair, with a central conflict concerning an unconsummated romance between these two star-crossed lovers due to socio-economic issues and untimely mortality, but you can never mistake Campion’s unhurried direction and sublime grasp of Keat’s beautiful poetry. In her arguably last best work, The Piano, she draws sensuality and character nuances through the beauty of framing, filmic cadence and screenwriting – and here, she employs that craft, capturing languid, evocative shots courtesy of Greg Fraiser’s photography with a painterly approach. Transposing poetry into film is never an easy job, which could end up either lethargic or begrudgingly pretentious, but Bright Star has images that convey the quiet, sumptuous power of poetry itself. Shots of butterflies fluttering around a room, a field of lavenders, letters melding into the screen as Fanny reads them, and Keats lying atop a tree under a curtain of sunlight – these are wordless scenes harbouring such exquisite beauty its beyond verbal description.


But it’s not only loveliness and visualisations. Campion’s screenplay provides an aching paean to Romantic love, unfettered and unalloyed, and also untainted by the cynical modern mind. It has also performances that veer between tenderness and power – Ben Wishaw is spectacularly cast as the willowy Keats, remarkable for not reducing the poet’s lines into mere poetry reading but with sincere conviction. But this Abbie Cornish’s finest moment, the ‘bright star’ of the film, giving Fanny Brawne a feminist stance common to Campion’s films. It’s a vivid performance up there with Campion’s women, The Piano’s Holly Hunter and Portrait of a Lady’s Nicole Kidman. Her Brawne is one feisty, straightforward, unapologetic woman, who believes her tailoring can earn more money than the “two scribblings” of Keats and his poet friend Charles Brown (an oily Paul Schneider) put together. But when she fell in love with Keats and his work, she gives an emotional, headstrong intensity that is utterly convincing that when the doomed finale comes, her cry of anguish is truly heart-wrenching.


VERDICT:

It's unimaginable for a film to match John Keat's sublime poetry, but Jane Campion captures a visual panache and elegance that gives Bright Star that exquisite, aching beauty that could make Romantic poets proud. Forget the trappings of a period drama, this is a beautifully understated and quietly moving film that has the power of an intimate poetry reading, delivered by Cornish and Wishaw with heartfelt sincerity.



RATING: A-