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“Bright Star” The Movie - what would poet, John Keats be like today

With “Bright Star,” what’s to rave about: as a director, Jane Campion’s choices are brilliant - coupled with the cinematography, staging, settings, use of colors: bright and striking, even in the overcast English countryside. In Campion’s eye, we live there - not postured and posed like previous Jane Austen types. We walk with them in the spring meadows; we join them for Christmas dinner party, music and singing - simple, intimate amusements. We are part of the immaculate attention to details like the faded and frayed draperies and upholstered furniture with holes - lovely but showing diminished financial circumstances.

Follow Abbie Cornish, as Fanny, in her proudly hand-made elegant clothing (she never wears the same dress twice), contrasted to obvious threadbare jackets worn by Keats (Ben Whitshaw). Some would say “costuming” but emphasis and placement show Campion’s hand and eye.

Fanny stretches out in a field of cornflower-blue flowers, and 7 year old sister Toots wanders through fields of yellow flowers where there is intention of meaning in the ones she picks, and those she discards. We almost see the director’s face instead of Fanny’s as she pushes her bed against the wall; she knows Keats sleeps on the other side with his bed touching that same wall.

These precious scenes in detail are reminiscent of the movie “Silk.” That was another lusciously filmed movie without a plot, and also lacking in character development.

Yes, a fine director, but someone other than Jane Campion could have/should have written or at lease collaborated in writing the script. This is a film about the poet John Keats in 1819, but it’s actually more a film about Fanny Brawne, the young woman, Keats falls in love with. Is Ben Whishaw (Keats) up to conveying the emotions of budding love. He does a lot of soulful laying around in an invalid’s repose, but I’m convinced a more sprightly script could have forged emotional fire.

It was Campion’s choice to portray Keats as delicate of spirit…but consider how it might have been if we were shown a physically frail man with a robust spirit - conflict provides the punch for a movie. When Jane Campion was interviewed by Charlie Rose on Sept. 16, she spoke of the actual letters Keats wrote to Fanny. We can read some of these letters where he sounds more like a man who did not want to be ill. John Keats would have winced in watching himself as flaccid. John Keats did not want to die.

For the book, “Keats’, by Whitbread Prize-winner Andrew Motion, the review by Amazon.com says the book “…stresses the vigor of Keats’ character…burying for good the sentimental cliché of a sickly dreamer.” Rather than being discouraged with Keats’ by seeing this movie again, I’m buying the Andrew Motion book as well as another, “Darkling I Listen (now there’s a poem, right there): The Last Days and Death of John Keats,” by John Evangelist Walsh.

“Bright Star” is a full spectrum away from Quintin Tarentino’s “Inglorious Bastards,” as he told Charlie Rose about his concept of reality, on August 21, 2009 - Tarentino does not like biographies; he doesn’t think they give the scriptwriter enough latitude. On the other hand, I believe a story is made fascinating by the way a true story is told.

My friend and I later discussed “Bright Star.” “So, what do you think?” “It’s a dreamy title, but I didn’t feel close to the characters…did you?” I shook my head, “It needed more plot.” This was real life in 1819; life was quiet, but bucolic can still be memorable - I smiled, thinking of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

I won’t be spoiling the end by telling you - his life inhibited by circumstance, Keats died at 25 from tuberculosis. “I didn’t cry, I didn’t even think about it,” my friend said. My reply, “No one in the audience cried - I don’t think we were involved enough for that.”

Keats never shook us for our attention. Compare “Bright” to the movie, “Atonement,” where even if you don‘t remember the plot, the characters were really open to view. I would never visit daytime drama…but I do want to feel something toward an actor.

Edie Martin plays Toots, Fanny’s 7 year old sister - she is the one I will remember - and a brilliant actress. You see her work and you want to write a character into your script just for her.

Developing the character of Charles Brown (Paul Schneider) would have made the film richer. He played the heavy spoiler, a mean ugly man and Keats’ friend and manager - an odd contrast that wasn‘t explained. Mr. Brown’s character cries out for more definitive emotions, perhaps an unrequited sexual attachment to Keats.

Don’t say, they didn’t do that back then, because they did. This was pre-Victorian and a time of romantic dalliance. People weren’t kept away from sex; it was just that they were supposed to marry well, or at least above their station. They wrote and read about romantic love but few married for love.

Why do people say this is an erotic movie - perhaps a matter of semantics. Nothing about this movie was erotic as it would relate to physical or emotional sexuality; it attempted to be romantic with the couple mooning deep and delicate gazes, but they were not emotionally intimate. Viewers are attracted to intimacy because it is valued and sought after - these people were up close…but not personal.

The only exception to any degree was a scene near the end where they curled together on a bed - filmed from above looking down. He told her how it would be when (if) he returned. She responded, but you knew neither believed he would.

If Campion wasn’t portraying Keats as he really was, then she intentionally made the characters muted to emphasize each delicate and precious moment - well…if that’s what you want. But real people don’t act that way - not now, nor in 1819.

Time to slip out front for a cup of strong coffee. I say to the barista, “Who’s coming to this movie…you know, demographics?” She’s nonplused, smiles halfway. She might be thinking “older crowd,” but poetry is written by people of all ages. Good thing this movie has been diligently promoted - right before the nightly news with BBC. I’m a chick but I don‘t intentionally frequent those. “I look for a thinking-person’s movie,” I say to her.

“That’s why I work here…well, other than needing a job,” she to me. This is an art house but they are increasing the menu of mainstream cinema…showing “Inglorious Bastards” on another screen.

Going through my past newspapers, I just came across a major piece in “The New York Times,” Sunday Style Section, of September 27, 2009, titled “Last Flight of the Phoenix.” It included a larger-than half page portrait from the ‘70s, of Jim Carroll. He has a slight startled look on his young face, mixed with a serene pose, as if he were daring the observer to come closer and wonder why.

I was captivated and read on, even sought out more details.

Having just seem “Bright Star,” I suddenly made the jump from one poet to another; I asked myself, what if John Keats had a second life, here in current times. What would he be like in this entertainment era.

He would surely be much like Jim Carroll, a prodigy poet in way out ways, startling, provoking - a writer of books (The Basketball Diaries when he was only 16), a poet, a singer/songwriter/musician with his landmark album, “Catholic Boy” and hit song “People Who Died.” In 1980, he was a young man who explored the dark side of drugs and destitution. A lost boy. When reporters asked, “‘What’s a Pulitzer Prize nominee doing fronting a rock band?’ Carroll was already well-known in underground circles for having lived a life of mythic proportions.”  "Not so much a singer as an incantatory rock & roll poet," by NYTimes critic Stephen Holden in 1982.

In 1996, he came out with the album, “Pools of Mercury,"  "an amalgam of his crafts, part spoken word, part rock & roll,” from “Rolling Stone.” The Rolling Stone Network spoke with Carroll by phone before he was about to leave on a spoken word tour. They asked him what his inspiration was for the new album, “Actually when I started doing this record, it was mainly going to be a spoken word with music. Then there was just this sudden rock & roll energy.” The Network people mentioned that a conversation with Carroll is filled with anecdotes and off on tangents, “twice as long as you expected,” and “filled with insights and humor” - even though he could be reclusive.

With Keats as Carroll, he would have lived longer this time, dying of a heart attack at age 60 (Sept.11, 2009)...but looking older than his years, gaunt with a profound beard, and scholarly glasses, a brown felt brimmed hat pulled down, as in the second page picture of the “Times” article. Enigmatic, forlorn. He never looked completely happy. I expect Keats would look that way in modern times.

Punk-rock singer Patti Smith told the “Times,” “I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation.” That was what Keats’ reading public said about him. Two young men of words, floating through a life of words strung together in poetic couplings.

Jim Carroll’s nearly completed current novel, “The Petting Zoo” tells of “an art world prodigy of the 1980s, Billy Wolfram, who was driven by his early fame, into seclusion, where he suffers psychological and spiritual criticism,” by Alex Williams of the “NYTimes.” This must be Mr. Carroll’s self-projection, and poetic introspection…and a Keats of a different style.

This article by Williams is in itself written in a poetic style befitting the celebration of a poet’s life, thus making Carroll, an artistic and stylistic companion to Keats. Keats deserved a movie as a paean to his words, as does Jim Carroll. Hopefully these words of Carroll’s hand and mind will be adapted to the large screen.

Jim Carroll's timing has always been skewed - originally published in 1978, "Basketball Diaries" made the bestseller lists after it was made into a movie in 1995, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. "At book signings with DeCaprio, 'it was Carroll the crowds clamored for.'"

Just as the “Phoenix” in the article title, this “aging punk poet” is expected to become a future player. His friends expect his new book to be posthumously completed…and published in 2010.

With “Bright Star,” it’s not that it was bad movie; it’s just that it could have been so much more. It was about dying…but what if Keats had recovered long enough to run into H.G.Wells’ time machine, and come to the present as Jim Carroll…he would still be dead, but we would have a new book to look forward to and surely a more fascinating movie.