Adaptation: Bright Star

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, -
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

- excerpt from "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats

Oh, Keats. I must confess straight-off, I was almost entirely unfamiliar with his poems prior to seeing Bright Star. I had chiefly come into contact with his work in crossword clues like "__ __ __ on a Grecian Urn." (Ode is quite the popular crossword answer.) I am definitely undereducated when it comes to poetry*.

Nevertheless, I was quite intrigued by everything I'd read and seen of Bright Star, which tells the story of the last years of Keats's life. (He died at age twenty-five from tuberculosis). I'm quite the sucker for period romances (A Room with a View is one of my very favorite films), and I found the trailer to be flat-out beautiful. So while I didn't quite make it to the theater, it got moved up to the top of my Netflix queue soon after it arrived on DVD.

Keats is played by Ben Whishaw, an actor so captivating and otherworldly that I'm not entirely convinced that he's not some sort of fairy prince. At the point that we meet him, Keats is sharing a home with his friend and fellow poet, Charles Brown (Paul Schneider), on a property shared with the Brawne family. The eldest Brawne daughter, Fanny (Abbie Cornish), is a clear-headed young woman with an interest in designing clothes. They begin to get to know each other. Then they begin to fall in love.

Their courtship scenes are absolutely lovely. Keats, whose poetry had been released to no great acclaim at that point, had neither the wealth nor the status to propose marriage to Fanny. Fanny didn't care, of course, but this was the early 19th century - things were not so simple. Brown, for his part, urges Keats to spurn Fanny, as he believes her to be toying with him. (Brown's jealousy is clearly an issue, and Schneider really handles it well.) All the same, we see their great, ever-growing passion for one another, relayed in the smallest of gestures - my particular favorite was the flutter of Keats's eyelids when he realized he was separated from Fanny by only the wall between their respective rooms. It's not hard to imagine that this is the man who once ended a poem ("Bright Star," actually) with the line, "And so live ever - or else swoon to death."

So their romance is doomed - doubly so, as we the viewers know that Keats does not have long to live. This knowledge does not make it seem any less tragic, though credit goes to Jane Campion for imbuing the film with so many lovely moments that the tragedy is not overbearing. I really cannot overemphasize how gorgeous the film is.


That's one of my favorite scenes. It seems so simple, but the wind blowing the curtain in while Fanny sits, contemplative, upon the bed is almost achingly beautiful.

I'm almost glad I didn't see Bright Star earlier, because I think I would have been far more disappointed upon hearing the Oscar nominations last week if I had. I would put it right up there for Best Picture, and it deserved a nod in many of the other categories as well - I'd particularly single out Schneider for Best Supporting Actor, as well as the cinematography. It is a bit frustrating when films of this quality don't get nominated for awards, but I'm glad I discovered it, at least.

Oh - and Andrew Motion's biography of Keats (upon which Campion's screenplay was based) is totally on hold for me at the library.

*Although I am still trying, intermittently. I recently dug out Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled again, and now I'm well informed about villanelles ("Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Path is a brilliant example, if you are unfamiliar with the style, as I was.)