Oh, how I loved this film. I make my living with words and images, but I don’t feel up to the task of describing what I found so moving and true about Jane Campion’s latest film Bright Star, the love story of Fanny Brawne and John Keats. At least, not yet. Sometimes a film touches me so deeply that I really don’t want to write about it until I’ve seen it many times and thought about it intensely.
I have not loved a Jane Campion film since The Piano, and it took me some years and probably 25 viewings before I was ready to write about that film seriously (an essay co-authored by Kirsten James Fatzinger, “Choosing Silence: Defiance and Resistance Without Voice in Jane Campion’s The Piano”) .
For now, a short hour or so after seeing Bright Star, let me just say that it is lush, lovely, beautifully acted, and a reminder that as much as I try to cultivate a veneer of cynicism, I am an incurable romantic beneath the veneer. Easily one of my favorite films of the year.
Can’t wait to see Bright Star–especially now that one of my favorite critics has given it such a Bright review! Maybe we can watch it another time (or 25), and collaborate again…?
Mary — Hum!!! I know you pretty well and I don’t really see any signs of the veneer of cynicism!
Sounds like a very interesting movie. I’ll have to check it out. I struggled a lot with The Piano.
Mary