It must be quite frustrating for somebody who invested so much art and cinema know-how into making this film, and I suspect holds a lot of passion and tenderness for the heroes and for their times to read such feedback. I cannot however hide the facts. I liked a lot of things in Jane Campion's last film. Almost each scene is a visual masterpiece in setting, in colors, in placement of the actors, in the angles of the camera. It's a beauty to watch. But one does not come to the movies as he comes to a museum, and even for a visit in a museum two hours of continuous beauty without a break are tiring. The actors are well chosen, they are fresh faces and yet beautiful (Abbie Cornish) and expressive (Ben Whishaw' John Keats), and the film also brings the most adorable red-haired kid actor I have ever seen (the name is Edie Martin). Characters develop, and people speak, and fall in love, and love falls apart, and life falls apart, and there is a lot of poetry in all this, loudly read poetry, but then one does not come to the movies as he comes to a poetry reading. Some action is needed, some suspense is deserved - and this is exactly what 'Bright Star' is lacking in my opinion. We know everything that can and will happen in the film from the start, and the only unknown the film can offer is how fast or how slow the 119 minutes will go. Well, they were quite long for me by the end of the film.
Jane Campion is back to the period movies genre which made her most famous with 'The Piano'. In-between she made a couple of films in other genres ('Holy Smoke', 'In the Cut') which I liked more than the average critic and IMDb viewers opinion. I looked that the situation is reversed with 'Bright Star'.
