Bright Star

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: September 18th, 2009 (limited)

Starring: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Thomas Sangster, Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox
 
Directed by: Jane Campion 

Premise: Based on the three-year romance between 19th century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, which was cut short by Keats' untimely death at age 25.

[samsong]

good god that trailer is horrible.

imagery + subject matter + actors (though paul schneider looks woefully miscast)... i'm interested. 

[Stefen]

Isn't Abbie Cornish the reporter who covers Washington politics for NPR?

Jane Campion is a bit too proper for my tastes. Also the PG rating ensures there will be no nudity.

PASS.

[pete]

the trailer seems to suggest a story that the actors couldn't deliver - they don't seem to mean the lines they deliver and as a result those lines sound amatuerish.  too bad.

[samsong]

i enjoyed this.  probably the most felt and beautifully crafted romance i've seen in theaters since the new world, which it compares favorably to but goes to show just how incredible and untouchable malick's film is by comparison.  it's also a much better intimate historical epic a la girlie diary entry than marie antoinette.  bright star plays out like an act of remembrance, as though campion were using the story of john keats and fanny brawne to recount her own experience with first love.  there's certainly more to it--musings about art and love abound--though it doesn't really go much further than what you'd expect from this story as told by this director.  the only other film of campion's i've seen is the piano and this is considerably more conventional and "safer", but just as insightful.  it's a generous and moving film, languidly paced and grounded with a lovely soundtrack.  performances are all very good, in particular the consistently great ben whishaw. 

[modage]

What samsong said.  Generally I hate films set in this period, but recently I've seen a few that I've enjoyed including Pride & Prejudice, Marie Antoinette and now Bright Star.  The film moves at a measured pace (without the witty dialogue of Jane Austen), that can seem slow at time but ultimately creates a more romantic mood for the film.  The film has many beautiful images and though a little long is rarely boring.  Had the doomed romance not been historically accurate I would had been annoyed at how these two are torn apart but "it actually happened" is good enough to excuse why these two couldn't have spent more time together.

[Gamblour.]

This sucked. I wish I could be more poetic about since it's Keats, but it ain't making the top 10 this year. Cornish was pretty good, mostly at being normal and just confused about everything. Whinshaw is pretty wonderful, and Paul Schneider is surprisingly not embarrassing. The music is very beautiful, I thought the costumes were gorgeous (I want Keats' fucking jacket), and there is one sequence -- just one -- that I thought was transcendent, where they first kiss and walk behind Brawn's sister and pause, set to the loveliest music. That alone made the film not terrible, along with the painterly style throughout that made it hard to be totally bored watching the film.

However, aside from that, this was a complete boring snooze. I mean, I really tried to grab onto anything here. Is it about Brawn's insecurities? Sort of. Is it about Keats' poetry? Kind of, and that would've been nice. Is it about their relationship? I guess so? The film had no focus. A slowly paced film can obviously work, but when combined with a script that's lacking any focus that's more than approximate, it was really painful.

There were points, for sure, where everything came together and the slow rhythm, mixed with the compositions and music, really did work. But they would fly by so quickly that I would immediately miss them. The story is told in such a mundane way, with these wisps of sublime love that it tries to hard to present plainly. If there were more whimsy or even just more dedication to a few of the major points of the story, this would have been wonderful.