‘Bright Star’ is a bitter-sweet movie of the love between romantic poet – John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish).Despite all the odds – she being of a higher echelon than he and interested in high fashion as opposed to his impoverished status, their love blossomed.
“He had no advantages of birth, wealth or education; he lost his parents in childhood, watched one brother die of tuberculosis and the other emigrate to America. Poverty kept him from marrying the woman he loved. And he achieved lasting fame only after his early death in 1821. Yet grief and hardship never destroyed his passionate commitment to poetry.” http://englishhistory.net/keats/contents.html
Although the love affair only lasted two years (as Keats died at the age of 25) it was to spark a ‘torrent’ of poetry which today makes him one of the most recognised romantic poets of the 19th Century.
Jane Campion, inspired by the love letters between the couple, has not only brought to the screen a tender and moving tale, but an insight into the mind of this tortured poet. Along the way she has assembled a scrap book to document the making of the film. This can be accessed at http://www.brightstarthemovie.com/default.aspx
