Bright Star

Keats's romance with Fanny Brawne and final days are brought to lovely life in Jane Campion's new film, Bright Star. He had TB, though it's never named. When he had become very ill, they sent him to Rome. How foolish! Its climate isn't healthy, though it might have seemed so compared to Hampstead. The house where Keats lived in Hampstead for two years and was in love with Fanny Brawne and wrote some of his has just been restored.

Campion's film may not be a deep investigation of poetical genius, but it's delicate and alive and infinitely touching. There's a delightful litte rosy-cheeked girl, and good use is made of cats. The handsome Regency house was then divided into two, one side occupied by Keats and his landlord and possessive companion Charles Brown, the other by a family called Brawne. He fell in love with Fanny Brawne, and she with him. She is creative in her own way, a brilliant seamstress and designer of clothing who was inventive with fabrics. She didn't know much about poetry but to go by the film, she crammed the classics to be able to talk to Keats and read all his poems and memorized many passages. They recite them back and forth to each other, which may be artificial, but you don't mind, because the poetry is their love, it bloomed through their love and expresses it. Until he began coughing blood and ceased to write because he was suddenly too ill, Keats wrote some of his best work in Hampstead, in love with Fanny Brwwne.

They express their love in long sweet kisses, and walking hand in hand. This too is artificial but a fitting symbolic expression of the ecstasy and swoons of romantic poetry.

Sometimes the final credits define the experience of a film and of its audience. You have to love a film over whose final credits the wispy, winsome Whishaw is heard softly reading the whole of the Ode to a Nightingale, right to the end, and you have to respect an audience in an American cineplex when many of its members sit still to hear Keats's masterpiece down to the final words, "Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/ Fled is that music: – Do I wake or sleep?" Can you imagine having known a person with such extravagant gifts? Campion doesn't get too much in the way of our own imagining. She just lets it happen, lets the cats wander in and out, and thus captures the sine curve of romantic experience, its extremes of joy and despair that are so poignantly focused in the life of this penniless English boy who died at twenty-five, thinking himself a failure, and left behind some of the finest poetry in the language.

Abbie Cornish plays Fanny, Ben Wishaw John Keats, Paul Schneider plays Charles Brown. The little rosy-cheeked sister, Margaret "Toots" Brawne, is played by Edie Martin. Brown is the villain of the piece, because he jealously guards Keants from Fanny, whom he thinks is a silly girl who only sews and flirts. He's getting in the way of romantic love! And Schneider can't help but seem obtrusive here. Brown redeems himself later when, having gotten the sweet Irish servant girl Abigail (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) with child, he does the right thing and marries her.

Fanny's mother says she can't marry Keats, because he has no money, but he proposes, and she accepts, and when the liebestod begins, there's no way of denying his happiness or Fanny's, or the sadness and devotion that made her wear the gold engagement band for the rest of her life. Campion's film offers no profound insights into the poetic process. But how can it? Though Fanny asks Keats to give her "lessons" in poetry, its appreciation, like its creation, must be instinctive and cannot be explained, particularly not the ethereal romantic kind. Wishaw's delicate and enigmatic quality is a satisfying image to hang our fantasies on.

"Bright Star" is not only one of the best films of the year, but also Jane Campion's return to top form. Possibly the most acclaimed female director of her time, thanks to early strong and praised works such as "Sweetie" (1989), "An Angel At My Table" (1990) and particularly "The Piano" (1993), the truth is that Campion hasn't had a real critical or commercial success since... "The Piano". "The Portrait of a Lady" (1996), her adaptation of the Henry James novel, had a stellar cast, but was almost universally ignored; "Holy Smoke!" (1999), with Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel, had its moments, but failed to impress anybody; and "In the Cut" (2003) was easily her worst film (but far from a disaster). The fact that Campion managed to remain such a respected name all these years even though not being the most prolific or successful filmmaker proves how influential and fascinating she is. She became some sort of figure for all the major female filmmakers from the past two decades and developed a very personal style marked by strong female sexuality (often, repressed), told with visual lyricism. She may be considered a feminist, but not the obviously preachy type, because her work flows like good cinema, and not as a heavy-handed gender discussion.

"Bright Star" is a tragic love story, beautifully directed, acted, photographed and written. Is it a revolutionary or innovative film? No. But the power of its lyricism and unabridged romanticism is infinitely touching. Anyone familiar with 19th century poet John Keats knows that he died of tuberculosis at 25 (and this is no major spoiler, since it's mentioned in every synopsis of the film), so we know the love birds are not going to live happily ever after. Campion centers on the three-year romance between Keats (a discreet and charming Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish, magnificent); their passion and the issues that prevented them from being together. Whishaw fits Keats' shoes perfectly, even if he might seem a little too low key at times. Paul Schneider ("All the Real Girls"), who's becoming one of the great American character actors, plays the villain as Charles Armitage Brown, Keats' friend who will do whatever he can to keep him away from Fanny. Kerry Fox ("Shallow Grave", "Intimacy"), unforgettable as Janet Frame in Campion's "An Angel At My Table", plays Mrs. Brawne, and Edie Martin is simply adorable as Fanny's little sister Toots. But this is Abbie Cornish's show all the way. This 27 year-old Australian first impressed me opposite Heath Ledger in 2006's "Candy", and here she shows her full potential. Her Fanny is simply incandescent - a terrific performance that could culminate in Oscar glory. For all romantics and admirers of good cinema, "Bright Star" is what Keats himself would call 'a thing of beauty... a joy forever' - intoxicatingly beautiful. 10/10.

I saw this film tonight, and in my eyes, it is a perfect film. Beautifully acted by all involved, (several times during the film I found myself thinking 'Abby Cornish is amazing!", despite not being a huge fan before), and stunningly shot, it contains some of the most beautifully cinematic scenes i have ever seen committed to film. Campion does a wonderful job of communicating Fanny' emotional state through the composition, particularly in one scene where the wind is blowing the curtain in her bedroom. The light and colour are fresh and gorgeous and the costumes and design add to the overall piece without being distracting, which is just what you want from a period piece.

But in the end, it is above all a wonderful story, well told. A deeply romantic tale, the story of Fanny and Keats could easily have become a mawkish, overly sentimental piece. But through her wonderfully naturalistic dialogue, her use of humour and light touch, and her restrained story telling (she never lets a scene go on one line too long) Jane Campion has created a heart wrenching film which I cannot fault. The characters are real and fully rounded, you feel the joys and the pain with them, and where I think she really succeeds is by making their love affair extraordinary and yet at the same time deeply ordinary. It stirred up my own personal experiences of love and loss and you would have to have a heart of stone not to shed a tear at the end. Lovely lovely film, and what cinema should be all about.

When watching Jane Campion's affectionate account of the final months of John Keats's brief life I could not but ponder on the precariousness of human existence even at such relatively short time ago as the early years of the nineteenth century. Ahead were those advances in medical science that certainly have enabled this octogenarian to watch several hundred wonderful films rather than a small handful. It is the ephemeral nature of experience that tugs at the heartstrings, a romance with everything going for it, cut short because a cure now available simply was not there. "Bright Star" lovingly conveys the "carpe diem" of the all too brief relationship of the young poet with his very near neighbour, Fanny Brawne. Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish instinctively express the emotions of an affair they know to be all too short in a way that reminds that great romantic cinema is far from dead. As if this were not enough, Campion's work is terrific on period detail. A shot very near the beginning depicting a Hampstead village landscape with white sheets of washing flapping in the foreground is breathtakingly beautiful. And this just one of many. There are moments of exquisite tenderness such as the scene where Keats comments on the rosebud complexion of Toots, Fanny's much younger sister. We are never far from the poetry itself which is oft-quoted even to the extent of providing a background to the final credits thus rendering the usual rushed exit from the half lit "dream palace" all but impossible. There is a moment shortly towards the end when Fanny, hearing of Keats's death collapses in a paroxysm of grief. As moving as similar moments in the work of such masters as Satyajit Ray and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, this places Jane Campion's film on the highest level.

With such high hopes for a film, a letdown is always lurking the depths of your mind, but in this case, Campion far exceeded my exceptions. Never could I have predicted the deep, meticulously crafted scenes, led so strongly by Abbie Cornish playing Fanny. The heartwrenching emotion in this movie was unlike any other; there has never been a more real portrayal of the most simplistic yet most common emotions that rule the heart. Campion went far beyond the usual "I am deeply in love; Now I am sad" and truly captured human idiosyncrasy as she delved into the illogical, irrational minds of two young and suddenly in love individuals. At times, it was almost too much to bear due to how intensely palpable the sadness was. To some, certain scenes or moments may have seemed a little longer than usual, but completely necessary is the silence, just as much as the dialogue. This film perfectly embodied how a simple, real, profound story should be told.

If the above were not enough to drive this movie on, the aesthetics were nothing short of spectacular. Each stitch in Fanny's sewing was as beautiful as each scene in a field of lavender or room flooded with butterflies. The magnificent settings, costumes, and natural sunshine pouring into a perfectly decorated room felt not contrived, but simply like a very real dream. As the curtains in Fanny's room got caught in the breeze, it was as if you felt it cooling you down ever so slightly as her content emotion overtook your mind.

Ben Whishaw, too, was superb: perfectly embodying the fragile, wondrous poet that was John Keats, so full of tender emotion. Fanny's younger sister was another beautiful element of this film and really stole the show in her own right with her hilarious and endearing perception of life in general. Each character and each line spoken brought something so special to the story. As much witty humor as there was aching sorrow, this movie is not one to be missed.