Movie Review: Bright Star (2009)

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As the last of the great pre-Victorian era Romantic poets, John Keats wrote in the oft-quoted "Ode to a Grecian Urn," "Beauty is truth, truth beauty-- that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Keats was sensitive, passionate, contradictory and daring both in his life and his work. And even if John Keats hadn't have been officially labeled as a Romantic poet or if you consider his poems "a strain to work out" as his sweetheart Fanny Brawne admitted, his ability to transform words into an impressionistic literary painting of love make it easy to understand why filmmaker Jane Campion would gravitate towards Keats for her long-anticipated return to filmmaking.

Much like Keats (Brideshead Revisited actor Ben Whishaw) would confess to feeling as though he was "dissolving" in his love for seamstress Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) who lived next door, Campion creates a sensuous feast of a film to dissolve in as well. Although on the surface, Campion's ongoing experimental quest to use nature as subtext to address the feelings her characters cannot share verbally may seem ill-suited for a film about a poet whose phrases have become part of our culture. Yet, it's a surprisingly effective technique for Bright Star.

For, while poetry and discussion of the process is used throughout the work, Campion's film goes against what is expected in a traditional biopic by centering her film purely on the chaste but all-consuming ill-fated three year romance between Brawne and Keats before his untimely death from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five.

Instead of trying to add to history's ongoing study of Keats, Campion remains in the realm of her expertise by investing the most time and attention in the point-of-view of strong women. To this end, Australian actress Abbie Cornish who'd already impressed me with turns in Candy, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and Stop-Loss is as intensely passionate as The Piano's Holly Hunter and driven to the same level of extremes in her emotions as Kate Winslet was in Campion's Holy Smoke.

And despite the fact that she smolders alongside a beautiful Ben Whishaw, she easily overpowers him with her skill and intensity in every scene. Although this could've possibly been a direction made by Campion to illustrate Brawne's effect on the poet, the only actor who's routinely able to hold their own opposite Cornish is Paul Schneider. Sure to be in contention for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, Schneider, who is usually given sidelined but effective supporting roles in movies like The Assassination of Jesse James... and Lars and the Real Girl finally reminded me just why he commanded my attention opposite Zooey Deschanel in All the Real Girls.

In Bright Star, he creates a riveting, endlessly complicated portrait of Keats' best friend, his Scottish collaborator Charles Brown who openly accuses Brawne of being nothing but a flirt and tries to prevent their infatuation since he views the woman as either unworthy, a drain on his friend's talent, or a rival for Keats' affection.

Drawing from Andrew Motion's 1997 biography Keats, writer/director Campion's Bright Star is at once her strongest yet most subtle film since The Piano by using character driven emotion as the driving force for the entire plot and therefore breaking down the usually stuffy walls of period pieces like Whishaw's Brideshead Revisited to make us feel as though we're in the midst of the all-consuming love affair as well.

Thankfully avoiding the same Avant-garde interpretation which ruined her adaptation of Portrait of a Lady, she's made an inviting yet intoxicating reverie about an unlikely human connection between an early nineteenth century pre-feminist fashionista and the penniless poet who-- thinking himself a failure-- was therefore an unsuitable marital match for the woman he adored which made them both miserable in love.

Employing the gifted cinematographer Greig Fraser and editor Alexandre de Franceschi for some bold and intoxicating sequences that may test the patience of audience members who are still dizzy from the rollercoaster of flashy CGI summer movies with cuts that only last for two seconds at a time, Bright Star contains some of the most unabashedly sincere and genuine sequences of true romance brought to life in years.

Without removing a single article of clothing and most of the time, never away from the watchful eyes of Fanny's younger brother and sister who accompany her as makeshift chaperones, Campion reminds us that sexuality and sensuality is the most effective when it's withheld. Thus, since she refuses to change the important facts, Campion won't rewrite history and manages to make us swoon along with characters who refuse to go against the social mores of the time and have to find other ways to express their desire such as placing their hands on the opposite side of the same wall at night, Keats requesting that Brawne kiss thoroughly a letter so that he can feel her lips, sleeping with a handwritten "good night" note under his pillow, or the Brawnes' turning Fanny's room into a butterfly museum after a letter he writes inspires their quest.

Although further research reveals that there's an ongoing debate as to how one or two-sided their relationship may have been or what exactly transpired, Campion's Bright Star which is named after the poem that Keats had written for Fanny Brawne (which is referenced in the film) is a gorgeous, naturalistic, and seductive piece of filmmaking wherein "beauty is truth" indeed and that's "all ye need to know."

Jane Campion



John Keats

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TV on DVD: A Village Affair (1994)

On Acorn Media DVD
5/26/09

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Originally, director Moira Armstrong's A Village Affair was well-received during its initial run on ITV in 1995 for its stunning cinematography and strong production values.

However and now more than a decade later, this sophisticated adaptation of the 1989 novel by Joanne Trollope-- releasing on DVD this week from Acorn Media-- has gained in popularity since it boasts one of the first recorded performances of the Oscar nominated Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, and Pirates of the Caribbean actress Keira Knightley (see below).

Present in the film's opening in a tiny role as one of the children of the film's emotionally conflicted main character Alice played by Sophie Ward, we glimpse the young Knightley riding along in the car with her two siblings as Alice travels forward towards what she and her husband (Nathaniel Parker) hope will be an idyllic life in the country.

Although we soon realize that despite their change of scenery, Alice has been unable to leave her depression and dissatisfaction behind her which is magnified upon her arrival with her overbearing mother-in-law taking over the home décor. Couple that with a disinterest in marital relations with her husband, and no longer feeling content in her role as a wife, mother, and painter and Alice is well overdue for an existential crisis.

Yet when the free-spirited, non-judgmental heiress Clodagh Unwin (Kerry Fox) returns home to the countryside--providing a stark contrast to the gossiping community that consists of citizens who concern themselves with offering their two cents on every given situation-- Clodagh's relationship with Alice and her husband sends tongues wagging.

Even though Alice (and indeed her husband as well) first assume that Clodagh's insistence and interest in the neighboring couple is due to a visible spark with the husband, soon we realize that there's an entirely unexpected motive as Clodagh reveals that the person who broke her heart back in the United States was a woman instead of a man. Now increasingly attracted to Alice-- Clodagh's acknowledgment of her true feelings meet with a more surprising result when they awaken an equal fiery passion in the unhappy housewife.

Overall, A Village Affair provides for a grand sudsy and daringly bold made-for-television romantic drama that's frank about its subject matter in this unrated presentation that's perhaps the equivalent of a strong PG-13 or light R in this beautifully transferred DVD that retains the original 4:3 aspect ratio and stereo sound.

And while continually we remain still confused about the internal motives and back-story of Alice (which was probably better clarified in the acclaimed novel) as the movie starts to derail from its strong first and second act in an overly melodramatic finale that doesn't conclude on an emotionally satisfying or fully realized note-- it's strengthened by the arrival of the talented Emma and Ideal Husband star Jeremy Northam (see below).

In the work, he personifies the most fascinating piece to the character ensemble puzzle of overlapping desires, regrets, secrets, and lies as the smoldering Northam lands in the community as Alice's self-centered and envious brother-in-law whose resentment of his brother has also extended to an interest in seducing Alice.

Since Northam is tuned into the raging libido within Alice and the fact that it isn't directed at him or his brother-- we know immediately as soon as he enters the film (presented as our obligatory bad boy) that he will propel the final emotional showdown unveiling the gender double standards regarding homophobia and infidelity.

Yet, while it's predicted as soon as he appears and the devastating confrontations and heartache will soon tumble down like blocks in a Jenga game in his wake-- we're still left with a sense that everything feels a bit too rushed as Clodagh becomes an irrational obsessive stereotype and a clear or satisfying resolution is never fully reached.

Again, the third act problems probably stem from the fact that Trollope's novel was condensed into a mere one hour and forty minute movie so the characters weren't as richly developed as they should have been. Likewise--although now fifteen years after its 1994 production, we've seen these sort of orientation awakening tales made to superior effect-- it's still a worthwhile effort.

Additionally it's even far more impressive when you realize that ITV and British television as a whole (similar to the amazing My Beautiful Laundrette starring Daniel Day Lewis in the '80s) believed in the most likely highly controversial project enough to put it into network television production in the early '90s whereas on this side of the pond, a mere kiss on shows like Will & Grace in the early '00s was still taboo.