Despite featuring John Keats as one of the main characters, it’s Abbie Cornish’s Fanny Brawne who leads this lush and tranquil love story. Written and directed by Jane Campion, the movie begins with the seamstress Fanny being introduced to unsuccessful poet Keats. The two quickly begin a romantic relationship despite Keats’ failing health. The two suffer when they’re apart and connect through body and soul when together. Theirs is a longing to simply inhabit the same space; they have peace of mind when the other is near. It’s a beautiful and wailing love story, destined for sadness and grief.
Campion is a director who loves to showcase beauty, something that seems to be becoming more and more of a rarity. So often we are introduced to worlds that are drab and bleak and doused in gray or movies that are popping with synthetic color and distracting visuals. Campion enjoys sitting back and immersing the audience in the beauty of the world she’s created. Scenes such as a depressed Fanny lying about her room with swarms of butterflies or her lying in the same room with a window open as the breeze blows in are testaments to Campion’s eye for what makes a shot work. Fanny wears vibrant rose colored dresses in winter’s naked woods, catching the eye of the viewer immediately and making her solitude all the more apparent. Campion shoots Ben Whishaw as Keats in a manner that shows off his delicate nature and his waif-like frame. Fanny is allured by Whishaw and his grace, and scenes such as when he climbs to the top of a tree and lies weightless on the top demonstrate his connectivity with nature without become absurd.
Campion also knows how to coincide the way she shoots with the atmosphere of the film and the moods of the characters. Her actors are lit according to their emotions. When Fanny and Keats are blissfully in love, the colors are sweet and warm and they’re shrouded in fields of flowers. When times grow more tumultuous or troubling, the colors begin to darken, seeping out as hope begins to fail. There is no wasted shot when it comes to Campion’s film, no frame that seems unnecessary. She shot a film about a poet and the woman who loved him with all of her being and it’s only natural that the film would be poetic and romantic. It’s also interesting how alive the setting seems with Keats inching closer and closer to death.
Fanny is a remarkable character. She’s protective and flirtatious, loving and stubborn, willing to walk to the ends of the earth for Keats while maintaining her independence in her thoughts and actions. She is the rock of the film as well as the heart and soul, and when her heart breaks at the end and we witness her sobbing, completely turned in on herself, unable to breathe, our hearts ache for her. She is such a warm and kindhearted soul and seeing her crumble is heartbreaking. It’s nearly a visceral reaction, and Abbie Cornish is stunning and should have been awarded for the film and her portrayal. You feel every emotion she’s going through, a grief so tangible it leaves you aching after the film has finished.
Cinema should be an emotional experience, and Campion created a movie that is so subtle in its movements that when the end comes and Fanny walks through the still woods, reciting her lover’s words in a dedicated, grieving march, you realize just how your senses have been overwhelmed. Filmmaking is at its best when the directing tells the story just as well as the words and the performers, and Bright Star does this in spades.
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