Bright Star (**½)

Directed by: Jane Campion

Starring: Ben Whishaw, Abbie Cornish, Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox, Thomas Sangster

Seen: February 8^th 2010

**½ Out of ****

Bright Star tells of the last three years in the life of the last-born Great Romantic Poet, John Keats (Whishaw), who died in 1821, and his strangely capricious romance with Fanny Brawne (Cornish). I cannot say that I really found the film a romantic revelation, as the relationship between Keats and Brawne is told with varying degrees of intensity as time passes: for one passage they seem madly in love running through meadows together, while in the following they are cold and distant, then Keats proposes to Fanny, while right after he again pushes her away. The machinations of the heart are however often very senseless, and one’s romantic idea of protecting a loved one might be the next one’s pure definition of distant seclusion.

Abbie Cornish is a wonderful young actress moving up through the ranks having also shared the screen with Heath Ledger in the haunting drug addiction movie Candy. In Bright Star she is the title “character”, and her love for Keats is an all-encompassing thing that pulls the viewer into the screen. Ben Whishaw is also impressive as the young poet, be it in the aloof and distant way he avoids getting too close too soon, or the moments in which he surrenders completely. And what is a romance without the possible complication of a triangle, deliciously and almost villainously supplied by Paul Schneider, who plays Charles Brown, Keats’ best friend. Thing is, said triangle does not involve a possible love between Brown and Fanny, but the possessive nature of Brown’s friendship with Keats.

While the movie truly has some beautiful moments of romance enhanced even more by the soothing and incredible poetry of Keats, they are outnumbered by everything that comes in-between, in essence just tedious passages of time punctuated by a few moments of over-the-top melodrama. The average intensity of the movie is just about right, but all that intensity accumulates in a few short scenes, causing the viewer to lose track a bit at times and then get surprised by the almost aggressive nature of a character’s response to events. I also found some passages awkward, even though in real life they may have played out in this exact way, Fanny reciting Keats’ poetry in her sorrow being a prime example of melodrama that some people may well subscribe to.

This being a tragic romance, ladies of all walks of life will need some tissues if they are the type to live inside the story, but for the most part I was in fact wishing I was watching something else, something more engaging. It seems to me that the only circa Victorian period movie I’ve ever really enjoyed was Sherlock Holmes, the rest just seem boring. As a (slightly pre-) Victorian era romance though, Bright Star is probably the best I’ve seen.