Bright Star

matthew
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Post by matthew »

hmmm...do we have our first best picture nomination contender for the year?
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Post by Sabin »

JEFFREY WELLS' OPINION...

Jane Campion's Bright Star, which screened this morning, is about the subdued and conflicted passions that defined the brief love affair between poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and seamstress Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) from 1818 until Keats' death, at age 25 from tuberculosis, in 1821.

It's been done quite perfectly -- I was especially taken with Grieg Frasder's vermeer-lit photography -- with immaculate fealty for the textures and tones of early 19th Century London, and a devotion to capturing the kind of love that is achingly conveyed in hand-written notes that are hand delivered by caring young fellows in waistcoats. You know what I mean.

But it struck me nonetheless as too slow and restricted and...well, just too damnably refined. I looked at my watch three times and decided around the two-thirds mark that it should have run 100 rather than 120 minutes. I know -- a typical guy reaction, right? The pacing is just right for the time period -- it would have felt appalling on some level if it had been shot and cut with haste for haste's sake -- but there's no getting around the feeling that it's a too-long sit. It's basically a Masterpiece Theatre thing that my mother will love. I'm not putting it down on its own terms. I felt nothing but admiration for the various elements.

A journalist friend told me an hour ago that Bright Star will be Oscar nominated in seven or eight categories because it delivers that particular brand of period romance fulfillment that people of a certain persuasion line up for when movies of this sort play the Royal in West Los Angeles and the Lincoln Plaza in Manhattan.
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From indieWire:

Campion’s Prudish “Star” Needs More Sizzle
by Eric Kohn (Updated 1 hour, 50 minutes ago)


A scene from Jane Campion's "Bright Eyes." Image courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival.This might sound horribly simplistic, but Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” desperately needs a sex scene. The movie puts such prominent focus on the romantic attraction shared by two characters—early nineteenth century poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his neighbor, budding fashion designer Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish)—and yet the full culmination of their desire remains solely implied. As a result, “Bright Star” not only takes place in English during the 1800’s; it seems like a product of that very era.

Perhaps that’s the point. Either way, Campion has constructed a highly classical narrative, one driven by archaic British dialogue and the mannerisms to match it. If that’s your cup of tea, so to speak, “Bright Star” churns along without a flaw in sight. The traditional laws of opposites attracting come into play, as they must: Brawne initially scoffs at Keats’s monetarily impractical profession, while he dutifully turns up his nose at her Victorian stuffiness. Gradually, she begins to appreciate his creative abilities, and the sparks start flying—or, rather, slowly oozing out, given the near-prosaic pace.

That said, “Bright Star” has a number of strong supporting performances, including Paul Schneider as Keats’s buddy Brown, who realizes the impossibility of the couple developing a lasting relationship. This unavoidable tragedy gives “Bright Star” the fuel it needs to arrive at an emotionally stirring, if not unpredictable, conclusion. Everyone involved with the couple recognize the difficulty of their situation, such as Brawne’s kindly mother (Kerry Fox), but nobody stands in their way. It’s a tale of consent against impossible odds.

History tells us that Keats died at age twenty-five from a debilitating illness, but in the movie, nobody expects his life with Brawne to last long, even before he gets sick. As a broke artist, Keats relies on the support of those around him in a world where married men must develop the resources to protect their families. He’s a primal form of the unemployed bohemian, devoted to his craft to the point of impracticality.

As she grows familiar with Keats’s talent for words, Brawne herself develops a creative streak, at which point “Bright Star” hints at greater potential. The final shot of the movie finds her wandering through snow-covered woods, reciting the eponymous poem as a lyrical expression of her grief. In the first scene, she seems entirely shut in by her social values; by the end, she’s a bonafide free-thinker. If it arrived at this point earlier in the plot, “Bright Star”—like Brawne—might have a lot more to say, and more room to say it.
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Post by Sabin »

Mike D'Angelo - 50
I gather this is pretty kind of okay if you don't support legislation that would ban all biopics.


This sounds to me like the front-runner for the Palme signifying the return of an artist within the realm of her former triumph.
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Peter Bradshaw at the Cannes film festival guardian.co.uk

Jane Campion has put herself in line for her second Palme d'Or here at the Cannes film festival with a film which I think could be the best of her career; an affecting and deeply considered study of the last years in the short life of John Keats, and the ecstasy of loss which suffuses his love affair with Fanny Brawne – a love thwarted not due to illness, but to a pernicious web of money worries, social scruples and irrelevant male loyalties.

Campion brings to this story an unfashionable, unapologetic reverence for romance and romantic love, and she responds to Keats's life and work with intelligence and grace. Any movie about a romantic poet has to be careful how glowingly it depicts the great outdoors but this film looks unselfconsciously beautiful, and Campion and her cinematographer Greig Fraser never harangue the audience with their images. Poets, like musicians, need silence above all, and much of the film is played out in a deeply quiet calm.

Ben Whishaw plays Keats with a welcome restraint and Abbie Cornish is excellent as Fanny, the young woman from a neighbouring family in what, in 1818, is the wild north London countryside. It is to be the scene of a tragic pastoral. As her affection for Keats deepens, she finds herself in a love duel with Keats's friend and fellow poet: a Scot by the name of Mr Brown – a man dressed by Campion (a little excessively) in tartan trews and matching waistcoat, and so abrupt, maladroit, gloweringly passionate and resentful that his first name might as well be Gordon. He is played, with a reasonable Scottish accent, by the American actor Paul Schneider; Whishaw himself softens Keats's legendary cockney.

Of course, Brown is himself a little in love with Keats, and resents this young woman taking his friend away from their happy bachelor intimacy. But the dispute between Fanny and Mr Brown isn't simply between female and male love, it is between matrimony and vocation, between mere life and high art. As Brown sees it, love does not exalt poetry, it kills it. If Keats marries, he will have to toil in some banal profession with no time or energy left for writing.

There is a genuine spiritual dimension in the love imagined by Campion for Keats and Fanny: a love which fires Keats's work while threatening, as he and his friends fear it, to consume his life. As played by Cornish and Whishaw, their tenderness has at first the intimacy of cousins, then of outright lovers, and their first (and only) kiss is as intense as they come. Keats has no money to propose – this hesitation has its own delicious erotic charge – but then his terrible illness comes along, making living in an ecstatic present impossible. It is to trigger a protective panic among Keats's fellowship of male supporters and yea-saying critics. They club together to send him to those sunny Italian climes which will protect his health; there is only enough money for one ticket and Keats, in any case, foolishly fears marrying Fanny only to make her a widow. They must make an agonised farewell.

This heartfelt film has a nobility of its own; it draws you irresistibly into its world, and it might even trigger a new interest in Keats to match the sales of Jane Austen.
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Bright Star
(U.K.-Australia)
By TODD MCCARTHY
Variety


The Jane Campion embraced by 1990s arthouse audiences but who's been missing of late makes an impressive return with "Bright Star." Breaking through any period piece mustiness with piercing insight into the emotions and behavior of her characters, the writer-director examines the final years in the short life of 19th century romantic poet John Keats through the eyes of his beloved, Fanny Brawne, played by Abbie Cornish in an outstanding performance. Beautifully made film possesses solid appeal for specialized auds in most markets, including the U.S., where it will be released by Bob Berney's and Bill Pohlad's as-yet unnamed new distribution company, although its poetic orientation and dramatic restraint will likely stand in the way of wider acceptance.

Keats died in 1821 at age 25, and his final years were marked by an incredible burst of creativity as well as by his one great romance, which inspired some extraordinary love letters. By concentrating on the latter, as experienced by Fanny, Campion gives rather short shrift to the former, leaving the viewer with a vivid picture of the social constraints on grand passion and romantic fulfillment in England at the time. While avoiding the typical biopic template, the film nonetheless honors the facts of the central relationship, which means that some typical, central audiences expectations concerning emotional payoff aren't met.

Most of the action is confined to two neighboring houses in Hampstead Village, North London, beginning in 1818. Living in one is the Brawne family, a fatherless brood consisting of matriarch Mrs. Brawne (Kerry Fox), 18-year-old daughter Fanny (Cornish), teenager Samuel (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and little sprite Toots (Edie Martin), while the bearded, boorish Mr. Brown (Paul Schneider) and Keats (Ben Wishaw) occupy the other.

While unobtrusively laying in the character dynamics--Brown, highly protective of his Keats, is pointedly rude to Fanny and does all he can to keep her away from his friend, whom he tirelessly helps with his work--Campion devotes special attention to the physical and aural aspects of this little middle-class corner of British society, thereby highlighting the sensual qualities of life that particularly captivated Keats himself. The opening shots convey the act of sewing --Fanny's frequent activity -- with unsurpassed intimacy, a performance by a small male chorus at a domestic party carries oddly moving force, and other scenes pointedly focus upon pastimes that quiver with quasi-sexual sublimation, including dancing, sport, butterfly collecting and hunting for the most fragrant flowers.

Then there is the poetry, which brings home the realization of how few films have ever dealt with poets and their work. Effectively establishing herself as an onscreen proxy for most viewers, Fanny early on confesses to Keats that, "Poems are a strain to work out," but then volunteers to take lessons in poetry appreciation, which allows Keats to recommend an emotional, impressionistic reaction rather than an intellectual one. Writing her screenplay in a way that plainly speaks of another era and yet comes across as natural and unaffected, Campion works in snippets of Keats' work at relevant moments, even under the end credits.

Although he makes a point of articulating his perplexed attitude about women, the slim, dreamily attractive Keats is clearly captivated by Fanny, who stands out by virtue of the direct gaze with which she meets all people and predicaments. All the same, she can scarcely throw off the constraints of family expectations and social norms, just as Keats feels unable and even unqualified to pursue a proper courtship with Fanny due to his poverty and lack of prospects.

For these and other reasons, which initially include the fatal (and foreshadowing) illness of Keats' brother Tom and persistently involve Brown's interference and the poet's periodic absences, the great romance blossoms very slowly. Even at its height, it is physically expressed only by gentle kissing and caressing; actual consummation is not in the cards, and Campion stringently avoids even so much as a grand clinch or music-swelled embrace, permitting the emotions to be expressed largely through letters and verse.

Keats, who feels himself "dissolving" in his love for Fanny, also begins to dissipate physically from tuberculosis. Advised to move to a warmer climate, he decamps for Italy, where he succumbs. Rightly judging that, like the act of writing, endless coughing up blood does not make for very edifying viewing, Campion conveys the climactic information as Fanny learns it, to palpably convulsive effect.

With brown hair pulled tightly back and a tad more filled out than before, Cornish is made to look more plain than she actually is, which better emphasizes the importance of Fanny's character for Keats. The majority of her performance's success rests in her eyes, which are remarked upon by Brown for their amber hue and which, one senses, see and process so much. All of Campion's films center upon strong, complicated women, and Cornish's Fanny takes her place among the most memorable of them.

What's missing is an equally compelling sense of Keats' singular attributes. Everything one reads about the poet emphasizes his extreme sensitivity to nature and his almost swooning reaction to sensory stimuli. While these qualities are embedded in the filmmaking here, most particularly in the work of production and costume designer Janet Patterson and cinematographer Greig Fraser (who previously shot the shorts "The Water Diary" and "The Lady Bug" for Campion), they are not so evident in the writing of Keats' character or in the performance of Wishaw, which is appealing but not nearly as trenchant as that of his costar.

Schneider's oozing presence as Brown creates a constant sense of unease for Fanny, while Martin is entirely winning presence as Fanny's red-headed little sister. Mark Bradshaw's score reps a major plus.
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Film Review: Bright Star
By Ray Bennett
Hollywood Reporter



CANNES -- A treat for romantics and those who take their poetry seriously, Australian director Jane Campion's gorgeously filmed Festival de Cannes Competition entry "Bright Star" may not be a joy forever but it will do until the next joy comes along.

With much grace and at considerable leisure, 1993 Palme d'Or winner Campion ("The Piano") tells the story of the brief love affair between the gifted but early dead poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. Ben Whishaw plays Keats with impeccable tragedy and Abbie Cornish portrays winningly the beautiful seamstress Fanny, whose passion is constrained only by the rigorous mores of the times.

Cynics need not apply and it's doubtful that "Bright Star" will be the shining light at many suburban cineplexes, but festivals will eat it up, art house audiences will swoon and it will have a lucrative life on DVD and Blu-ray, not to mention the BBC and PBS.

The England depicted in the film is the one people are thinking of when they say they wish they were born during the time of the romantic poets. Only one scene in the picture shows the ugly underbelly of poverty in 1880s London, and for the rest it's all picturesque houses and gorgeous gardens in Hampstead Village.

There, Fanny lives with her widowed mother, Mrs. Brawne (Kerry Fox), and her well-behaved younger siblings Samuel (Thomas Brodie Sangster) and Margaret, known as Toots, (Edie Martin).

Their place in society takes them to social events and balls where Fanny's dance-card is always filled, although the glamorous Keats prefers not to dance. She has made a name, and money, for herself as a skilled maker of fashionable garments, although the best friend of the coveted Keats, a burly writer named Brown (Paul Schneider), dismisses her as "the very well-stitched Miss Brawne."

Fastidious and proud, Fanny feuds with Brown, who is over-protective of his genius friend, but she sends Toots to buy a copy of the poet's latest collection, as the child says, "to see if he's an idiot or not."

Persuaded that Keats is far from an idiot, she commences a romance that takes place within all the formal manners of the day, so that intimacy relies on kissed love letters and briefly touched hands. When Keats' brother Tom dies of consumption, things do not auger well, and while the love affair between the poet and the seamstress grows, his fate already has been written.

The English Whishaw, who was a sensation as Hamlet in Trevor Nunn's Old Vic stage production in 2004, played the similarly doomed Sebastian Flyte in "Brideshead Revisited" last year but makes his Keats singularly memorable. Cornish has the acting skill to match her striking beauty and she makes the small loving gestures that the British might call soppy both real and touching. Among the pleasures of the film is listening to them both declaim Keats' poetry.

The entire cast is good, with Schneider, who was among the exceptional ensemble in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," and Fox especially strong. Cinematographer Greig Fraser beautifully captures Janet Patterson's sumptuous production and costume designs, as well as the lovely gardens and countryside. Mark Bradshaw's elegant score is pleasingly delicate.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Jane Campion's latest at Cannes. Watch for spoilers.

Bright Star
15 May, 2009 | By Allan Hunter
Screendaily

Dir/scr. Jane Campion, UK/Australia. 2009. 119 mins



Sixteen years after The Piano, Jane Campion has found renewed artistic inspiration in a tragic romance to match the haunting intensity of that Palme D’Or winning feature.

Bright Star tells the story of the love affair between John Keats and Fanny Brawne with a classical poise, exquisite craftsmanship and a piercing tenderness. It is Campion’s most fully realised, satisfying achievement in a long while and will be warmly embraced as a prestige item with awards potential. The measured pace and restrained emotional temperature of the piece could restrict the market to an older, more sophisticated arthouse audience but Bright Star should still shine as an irresistible quality attraction.

Taking her lead from the sensuality of Keats’ verses, Campion has created a film that revels in the beauty of the English countryside. Gorgeous camerawork from Greig Fraser sees the changing seasons reflected in glowing daffodil fields, meadows strewn with bluebells and snow-dusted winter woods. The central love affair is expressed through modest caresses, clasped hands and lingering glances rather than anything more explicit. It is a dreamy film to make the viewer swoon.

In the London of 1818, impecunious 23-year-old John Keats (Ben Whishaw) has devoted himself to a life of poetry, sharing quarters with his devoted friend Mr Brown (Paul Schneider). Keats becomes an object of fascination for his neighbour Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), an 18-year-old whose own creativity is expressed in the bold clothes she designs and creates by hand. He describes her as a minx but a relationship that begins in playful banter gradually deepens into something which will overwhelm them both. A meeting of minds blossoms into a union of hearts.

Bright Star deftly avoids the stilted, starchy quality often found in lesser period dramas. Characters appear comfortable in their clothes and settings, the dialogue flows easily from their lips and there is a quiet, everyday intimacy to the way events unfold. We are invited into this world rather than kept at arm’s length because nothing jars or seems out of place. The keen attention to detail is never obtrusive but instead creates a complete, credible universe. Understanding and respecting an age hidebound by propriety and the observance of social rituals lends an authenticity to the restraint that Keats and Fanny were obliged to observe in navigating their feelings. There is a sense in which it is easier to say nothing than try to express the torrent of love stirring between them.

Beautifully crafted in every department from the composure of the camerawork to the precision of the costume and production design, Bright Star is a film to savour. Campion ensures that its pictorial appeal is matched by an emotional engagement thanks to a universally fine cast. Bearing a distracting resemblance to Eric Cantona, Paul Schneider’s broad Scottish accent may seem laboured at times but he perfectly captures the belligerence and sarcasm of a man determined to protect his friend from a woman he judges to be an emotional gold-digger. His jealousy and disdain for this threatening interloper rings completely true.

Australian Abbie Cornish is also obliged to adopt an unfamiliar accent but passes that test with flying colours. She captures all the youthful impetuosity of the English Fanny and portrays her as a young woman trying to maintain control of a life torn apart by all the fresh emotions and new sensations that she is experiencing. It is a performance that should win her awards season consideration and emphatically underlines why she is one of the most highly regarded performers of her generation. Great expectations now also attend the performances of Ben Whishaw and he is equally impressive as John Keats making the poet an entirely human figure; unassuming, vulnerable and constantly engaged by the mysteries of life, love and the burdens of being human.

The integrity of all the performances, including Kerry Fox as Mrs Brawne and Edie Martin as Fanny’s younger sister Margaret, is indicative of the overall quality of a film that has an honesty of approach to the period and the emotional heart of a tragic story that proves to be immensely moving.
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