Lines written on watching Bright Star

I noticed recently that BBC World News has been partly sponsored by “Bright Star, a new movie by Jane Campion”, so when a friend offered me a ticket to the preview last Thursday night, I was keen to quench my curiosity. If “quench” is what one does to curiosity.

While later researching the movie to write this, I came across a thought-provoking question in an interview with Jane Campion:

Mara Math: “Did you share fellow New Zealand writers’ ambivalence about being forced to study the British Romantic poets?” Jane Campion: “I did. They were labeled ‘great’ ... in a way that was oppressive at school.” Hmmm. Campion’s schooldays were contemporaneous with my own and I don’t recall any feeling of oppressiveness. (Though I have to admit that when I chose collections of poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg as part of my prize for coming first in English, my teacher thought it best not to include them in the stash given to the school principal to hand to me at the prize-giving.)

I approached the movie expecting three things would be beautifully done: the cinematography, the costumes, and the sets. On that score, I was right. The craft aspects of Bright Star will surely garner many Academy Award nominations, and probably the statuettes as well. An award for Best Sound is also on the cards, if only for the scene where the lovers are lying on a bed and the sound of their breathing is so true to life.

What I didn’t expect was to be totally confused by the story. Where the hell were these people living? And how did they come to know each other? It doesn’t help that “Brawne” and “Brown” sound so similar, either, and that people are often referred to by their last name. Sad to say, but you probably need to read up a bit about Charles Brown, John Keats, and the Brawne family before going to see Bright Star. The biography section of this website explains it pretty well. The screenplay leaves it too late to explain the relationship.

Another thing I’d recommend is that you sit as close to the front of the theatre as possible. It happened that I had to move from where I was first sitting—at the sweet spot; centre of row, one screen-width’s distance from the screen—because I got a terrible cramp in my leg. I ended up in the second-to-front row, to the side, where I could stretch my legs out, and was delighted to discover that it was a great place to sit. There is very little action in this movie, but a lot of painterly film work, and being immersed in the detail of it added to the experience.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less and less interested in BBC historical costume dramas—which is what Bright Star essentially is--but there’s a huge section of the American public who love them. Surprisingly, they’re very popular with people in their twenties and thirties, especially if they deal with literary figures. Jane Austen fan sites, for example, have had a presence on the Internet since the mid-nineties.

Bright Star might also be popular with those teenagers going through their “poetry phase”—if that phase is not now a cultural thing of the past. And I suspect that the young people of today, to use an archaism, probably see something familiar in the workfree life portrayed in the movie. The modern equivalent of the patronage system that allowed Keats to write with a roof over his head and food in his belly provided by patrons is the two guys who hit on the idea of getting sponsors for a trip around the United States by using Facebook and Twitter to write about their experience.

So. What about the acting?

Academy Award material, again, though perhaps not for Kerry Fox’s portrayal of the Brawne matriarch, as she faltered a little in some scenes. Bright Star is not your usual movie about a consumptive, lovelorn poet in that it’s not really about the consumptive, lovelorn poet but about the person who loves him. True, you could rent this as a DVD, smoke copious weed, and almost die laughing at the intensity of it, but I’m betting that even under those circumstances, in the end your cynical heart will recall the sheer tactility of sobbing in your mother’s arms, and you’ll wonder—as my movie-going companions and I did—how long it’s been since you’ve been able to express your grief, or any emotion, so honestly.

The film’s website is here.

--PEACE—
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