‘ Bright Star ‘ Jane Campion

Last evening I watched ‘ Bright Star ‘ a literary picture by award winning Jane Campion.

This 2009 film about the life of John Keats and his lover Fanny Brawne,

played by the enchanting Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw.  The film’s title, Bright Star,

comes from a love poem for Brawne which Keats wrote in the flyleaf

of his copy of the works of Shakespeare. Many of the lines in the script are taken directly

from Keats’s letters, which are as well known as his poems. Whishaw as well,

learned how to write with a quill and ink during filming.

The letters that Fanny Brawn receives from Keats in the film

were actually written by Whishaw in his own hand.

It is written and directed by Campion, and is probably

one of the most beautifully filmed stories I have seen for some time.

There is detail and visual description everywhere. The scenes are so well lit,

that the eye catches everything and the colour, texture and dialogue kept me glued

unto the end. Not everyones’ cup of tea, but as a way of slipping into a bygone era

and escaping for a couple of hours, it’s priceless lol

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

John Keats  Spring 1819.

I wonder if this song by a favourite group of mine, the Indigo Girls could have

been created with Keats and Fanny’s story in mind.