BRIGHT STAR

FIRST LOVE BURNS BRIGHTEST

A review of Jane Campion's recent film, Bright Star

by J. Cate Pilgrim

He'd come back to her changed. Korea had been...something. She could see it. He'd been a 19 year old in a fine uniform when the war started, but now he was twenty, a war hero with an empty left pant-leg to prove it. Walter Reed was taking care of him, he said. He didn't meet her gaze, but watched her eyes stray to the crutches and the one shoe on the floor. "You don't have to marry me, Francis. It's okay."
Her head jerks up, eyes blazing, and she grabs his shoulders.
"Don't have to? Shut up, Carl. I'm IN LOVE with you. I wanted to marry you, not your leg."

After watching Bright Star, I want to tell Jane Campion about my grandparents, and what they thought first love was all about. Campion obviously doen't understand its power. Her 2 hour biopic, Bright Star, struggles with the romance between poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his young neighbor Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Although both the cinematography and acting are superb, the film itself is hollow. Keats and Brawne profess undying love for each other, and then proceed to do so again, and again, and again. Then Keats sails to Rome and dies of tuberculosis. At random (and frequent) points, both characters stare off into space and start reciting fragments of poetry. Often they are ankle deep in flowers. If Campion is trying to usher us into the presence of the lyric Muse, it feels pushy.

Keats, played by Whishaw, comes across as a fragile artist, whose poetic genius excuses his indolence, poverty, and friendship with odious scotsman Charle Brown (Paul Schneider). Cornish, Fanny's character, has more depth - she's an 1820's Juliet with a penchant for fashion who must battle the restrictions of an England that expected love to play second fiddle to marriage. Unfortunately, the restrictions win out. Fanny balks at all the wrong moments, allowing herself to be hustled from Keats' sickbed and maintaining perfect calm when he sails to Italy to die. In one scene, the dying Keats turns up raving feverishly under a bush in the back garden, calling for Fanny. She rushes to his sides and collapses next to him, screaming for her mother (Kerry Fox) to bring help. Their entire relationship is built on what they say to each other, not what they do for each other. Keats does not marry Fanny. Fanny does not go to Rome with Keats. Yet nothing formidable seems to prevent them; they are trapped in a weird coccoon of inaction. On film, this inactivity is weirdly synonomous with tedious boredom. When Keats' finally coughs himself into the next world, relief, not grief is the predominant emotion in the theater.

Is the Great Ideal of Romance us Philistines should aspire toward? Should we emulate the moody Keats, who travels to London but can't bring himself to visit Fanny because his love for her is such a burning thing? Or strive to be like Fanny, who fills her room with butterflies when Keats sends her a letter, and then slits her wrist when he doesn't? It all looks very pretty on screen, but living it would be so...impractical.


It's a biopic, you say, based on historical facts. Facts are facts and Campion had no choice. Wrong. In 1819 the real-life John Keats bared his soul to eighteen year old Fanny, won the sympathy of her widowed mother, and courted her with the vigor of a normal, red-blooded male. No fields of daffodils. No roomfuls of butterflies. Within two years they were engaged to be married. During this period he composed three of the most beautiful poetic works ever written: "Ode on a Grecian Urn" "Ode to a Nightingale" and "La Belle Dam Sans Merci." When Keats began coughing blood, and Fanny was forbidden from visiting him, she fought through and nursed him tenderly during his final months in England. Their love deepened, even as he was dying. As he waited for death in Rome, he never put down the oval marble she had given him. In the same manner, Fanny wore the ring Keats had given her all her life, even after she married a Mr. Lindon. Both of them were selfless, doing what was best for the other; both of them were in love. Actively.

Honestly, Campion shouldn't need the story of Carl and Francis Pilgrim in order to grasp the magnitude of first love. She just needs to go back and read what really happened between Fanny and Keats. Then she could've put in a scene where John says, "You needn't marry me, Fanny. I'm dying, and I'd understand." Then Fanny could grab his shoulders, eyes burning, and say, "Needn't? John Keats,I'm IN LOVE with you. I want to marry you, not your lungs."