October 8, 2009
Review: Bright Star
Yes, I Saw It
I do occasionally see non-comedies. I try to support women directors, and it just so happens I have a thing for historical dramas if they're pretty enough. Bright Star is as beautiful as any movie can be: exquisitely detailed costumes in period-apppropriate fabrics, the eerily symmetrical beauty of Abbie Cornish, green English countrysides, you name it.
It's always a bit odd going into a historial biopic like this one, knowing exactly how the story is going to end. It's especially strange when you know it's not going to be a happy ending. Fictional tragedy is a genre with its own dictates; real-life 'tragedy' movies run the risk of wallowing all the more in their own pathetic bathos precisely because they represent true events.
Not this one, though. Jane Campion 'does grief the right way', as my viewing companion noted. And while I don't usually like stories built around women's suffering, you can't really deny the emotion of the historical figure, nor is the suffering made the centerpiece the way it is in so many 'chick' flicks.
It's amazing the difference a female writer/director makes. If a man had directed this movie you can bet the focus would have been on a Keats 'work-martyr' narrative, that particularly masculine storyline in which whatever the protagonist is doing is more important than family, love, or anything else in the world. His lover's suffering would then be a mere device to demonstrate this fact.
But Campion said all along that she was more interested in Fanny Brawne than John Keats, and it shows. Campion's writing and Abbie Cornish's tour de force performance make Fanny the indisputable main character. Keats's thoughts are less prominent, less revealed, and (really) less important than Fanny's own life decisions and reactions to the world around her.
I think it's pretty cool that Jane Campion managed to make Keats a character who is just sort of there -- not because actor Ben Whishlaw wasn't doing a fantastic job, but because Keats wasn't the main point of the story.
And, far from being the fashion-obsessed It-girl that some reviews have described, Fanny is actually a master craftswoman, a stitcher extraordinaire whose clothes are beautifully structured works of art in their own right. I don't know, maybe you have to sew to appreciate that element, however carefully documented by Campion's closeups. It's an important point, though, beause Fanny's devotion to craftsmanship stands in stark contrast to the Romantic 'feelings are all' aesthetic of poetry writing.
Apart from class difference and social pressure, the main conflict in this movie is between Fanny and Keats's patron/friend/watchdog Mr. Brown (Paul Schneider) as they battle for Keats's attention. I've had some experience with the work/partner conflict, and the movie had it down pat. And yes, that is Mark Brandanowitz of Parks and Recreation under the Scottish accent -- Paul Schneider is turning out to be quite an impressive actor!
