Starring: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox Director: Jane Campion Category: IIA
Jane Campion is hardly a novice when it comes to portraying anguished artists on film. She brought the story of novelist Janet Frame to the screen with An Angel at My Table, and wrote and directed the much-acclaimed The Piano, about a mute Scottish pianist struggling with her life after being sold by her father to a man in rural 19th-century New Zealand.
While admirable films, both pale in contrast to Campion's latest offering. At once a heart-rending romance between poet John Keats and his neighbour Fanny Brawne and a subtle celebration of art - mostly Keats' poetry, but also Brawne's clothes-making - Bright Star is quietly mesmerising, a mix of fine imagery and nuanced performances.
The film's title stems from the first line of a love sonnet Keats either wrote or revised with Brawne in mind, just as they became a couple. The poet compares the object of his affection to the 'steadfast' presence of a star, an entity patiently gazing at human instability.
That explains Campion's way of tackling the Keats-Brawne relationship. While inspired by Andrew Motion's biography of the poet, Bright Star unfolds nearly completely from Brawne's perspective, beginning in fact with a peek at her pre-Keats life (through a loving portrayal of her engaging in needlework) and ending with her grief-stricken state, after learning of his demise in Rome.
In between, Brawne emerges as more than a mere romantic foil to Keats' artistic magnificence. She is his muse and protector, providing an economic and spiritual antidote to the poet's weak health and unstable mental state. It's a portrait of a steel-willed lady, marked in one of the first exchanges between Brawne and Keats' best friend, Brown, when she reacts to the latter's put-down of her craft by saying how more people know of and admire her work and that she could earn a living from it.