vernon film society
Bringing the best in world and Canadian film to film lovers of Vernon and the North Okanagan
BRIGHT STAR
Director: Jane Campion
Cast: Abbie Cornish, Paul Schneider, Thomas Sangster, Ben Whishaw, Kerry Fox
Run Time: 112 minutes
Country: United Kingdom/Australia/France/USA
Year: 2009
Language: English
Rating: G (No advisory)
“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections,
and the truth of imagination.” – John Keats
Jane Campion achieved her first staggering success with The Piano, which won a multitude of awards (including the Palme d’Or in Cannes) and entrenched the director in the pantheon of world-class filmmakers. She followed her breakthrough work with highly sophisticated films like The Portrait of a Lady and In the Cut, and now triumphantly returns with Bright Star, which screened to rave reviews at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival®.
Bright Star chronicles the three-year love affair between poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw, Brideshead Revisited, Layer Cake,) and his neighbour Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish, Somersault, Elizabeth: The Golden Age), a relationship that came to an untimely end when Keats tragically died at the tender age of 25. Keats is one of the best-known Romantic poets of the nineteenth century, though during his short lifetime, his poetry received no small amount of unfavourable criticism. It was only after death that the extent of his influence was truly felt and understood, as evidenced in the poetry of artists like Alfred Tennyson. In addition to Keats’s poems, his aesthetic theories, especially those dealing with the artistic value of uncertainty – and hence the need for open-endedness and openmindedness in life and work – are among his greatest legacies.
Bright Star, however, is not a traditional biopic of a great artist. It tells the story of Keats’s love affair with Fanny from Fanny’s perspective and is inspired heavily by found materials like love letters. Campion has said she’s very interested in the small, intricate details that contribute to our understanding of these two people, and the film is more about love and art than it is about turning Keats’s life into the stuff of myth.
Sometimes beauty really is in the details, and Campion demonstrates this vividly in her heart-rending, gorgeous film about a love doomed from the start, whose fate hovers over every lush scene of the film. Given equal status to the main characters, the English countryside serves as a monumental backdrop to this intensely intimate, character-driven film.
“[Campion] breaks through any period piece mustiness with piercing insight into the emotions and behavior of her characters.” – Todd McCarthy, Variety
Reviews: www.metacritic.com/film/titles/brightstar
Official Site: www.brightstar-movie.com
