Bright Star

There are only four movies I can think of that captured such incredible loveliness in music, story and scenery: Cold Mountain, Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, and The New World. Bright Star has now been added to this list. Telling the tragic tale of Fanny Brawne and John Keats, this film was equally beautiful to watch and experience. I didn’t know much of Keats besides that he was a poet of great reputation, but this story, told mostly from the perspective of Fanny, was enthralling, enchanting, tragic and in ways obsessive. The entire thing wreaked of suffocation. The inability to be free, to do as you please, to live and love, no healthy lung full’s of anything. They clung quietly to each other, as if under water. One of my favorite moments, for I had many, was when Keats was describing to Fanny what poetry is, that if it isn’t natural it’s no good at all; that it’s about expressing things they way they are felt rather than literally- like diving into a lake.

I thought a lot about that quote and what it meant to me personally. I am no poet, but I do think of things artistically and I was never really able to explain my feelings about art in a way that was enough, that was equal, Keats did this in that one quote. It also explains my love of swimming. But the costumes were unparallel, each character defined and dictated perfectly, each scene a masterpiece of images: the filed of blue flowers, Toots coming down a stairway to a bowl of apples at a window, Fanny’s room with the butterflies and curtain blowing, Fanny’s gowns in candlelight. It was all so unmistakable. And sad. It was all so sad. It was obvious it would all end terribly, but… I know what that’s like. In every moment, I thought, I know what that’s like. I wouldn’t say I identified with any of the characters, but their situations were familiar. It’s hard and unfair, and that’s how good stories are made.