Campion, who won fans with The Piano (1993) and lost them with the dismal In the Cut (2003) here returns to the top of her form.
Bright Star (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:125
Fresh:104
Rotten:21
Average Rating:7.2/10
Consensus: Jane Campion's direction is as refined as her screenplay, and she gets the most out of her cast -- especially Abbie Cornish -- in this understated period drama.
Rated: PG [See Full Rating] for thematic elements, some sensuality, brief language and incidental smoking.
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Sep 16, 2009 Limited
Box Office: $4,341,275
Synopsis:
London 1818: a secret love affair begins between 23 year old English poet, John
Keats, and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne, an outspoken student of fashion.
This unlikely pair started at odds;...
London 1818: a secret love affair begins between 23 year old English poet, John
Keats, and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne, an outspoken student of fashion.
This unlikely pair started at odds; he thinking her a stylish minx, she unimpressed by
literature in general.
It was the illness of Keats’s younger brother that drew them together. Keats was
touched by Fanny’s efforts to help and agreed to teach her poetry.
By the time Fanny’s alarmed mother and Keats’s best friend Brown realised their
attachment, the relationship had an unstoppable momentum. Intensely and
helplessly absorbed in each other, the young lovers were swept into powerful new
sensations, “I have the feeling as if I were dissolving”, Keats wrote to her. Together
they rode a wave of romantic obsession that deepened as their troubles mounted.
Only Keats’s illness proved insurmountable. --© Pathe!
[More]
Starring: Ben Whishaw, Abbie Cornish, Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox
Starring: Ben Whishaw, Abbie Cornish, Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox, Thomas Sangster
Director: Jane Campion
Director: Jane Campion
Screenwriter: Jane Campion
Producer: Jan Chapman, Caroline Hewitt
Composer: Mark Bradshaw
Studio: Apparition
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Reviews for Bright Star
Bright Star is an admirable film made by a superb craftsman, but for me, Campion fails to deliver the big emotional punch she hopes to land.
A combination of unstuffy dialogue, wise casting, unselfconscious performances and sensuous but never pretty photography makes Campion’s version of the nineteenth century feel current but not anachronistic.
An eloquent, well-crafted return to form - and return to corsets and period frocks - for Jane Campion, who uses the character of Fanny Brawne, the survivor, to give a unique perspective on the creative, terminal period in the life of John Keats.
Without major tension, conflict or crisis, Brawne and Keats simply mope about, moon at each other, talk about literature and wait for the great poet to die from tuberculosis.
Dramatically static from first to final frame, it charts the non-progress of the central relationship as a series of nineteenth-century feints and counter-feints.
A wonderfully realised account of intoxicating love and a movie with spirit and soul. Don't expect it to set the box office on fire though.
This shrugs off the musty restraints of costumed stereotypes and concentrates exclusively on the slowburning affair as Keats finds himself "dissolving" as love draws him in.
Quietly shedding all the fussy baggage of ‘heritage drama’, Campion gives us a moving account of Keats’ great love and tragic death. A film of pictorial beauty and authenticity, graced with a fine cast.
There's a spellbinding, painterly quality to the way Campion depicts the changing seasons (between 1819 and 1820) and it sets a mood that complements the poet's vivid and sensuous style.
It simmers rather than sizzles, shimmers rather than sears. But possession of a Y chromosome is by no means an obstacle to enjoyment of it.
There's a fine line between fragile sensitivity and wimpishness, and Ben Whishaw tramples all over it. He is the drippiest British actor since the Merchant Ivory heyday of James Wilby.
[Bright Star] may have inspired some beautiful poetry but, here, provokes mere yawns.
Steadfastness, truth and a simple, blazing, incandescent humanity. This is a literary life story in which life, for once, is the meaningful word.
Bright Star deals with the sonnets and the bonnets – top marks to the production and costume designer, Janet Patterson – with wit and restraint, and proves that a chaste romance needn't lack for passion, or poetry.
Beautiful cinematography, exceptional performances and an admirable sense of restraint combine to make it one of the most gorgeous and satisfying period dramas in recent memory.
Campion has created another resonant paean to love’s pain and joy, and gives new life to John Keats, too often now associated with dusty school books.
Bright Star is that rare and upbraiding thing, a film - perhaps the last one of the year - that seeks not to jam your emotions or scare you silly, but asks you to think about words.
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