Reviews
Bright Star
November 6 2009
Jane Campion
Starring Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider
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In January 1954, critic-turned-nascent film director François Truffaut, months before his own short film debut, published a 5,000-word article in the French movie journal Cahiers du Cinéma called ‘Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Français’. The piece was Truffaut’s mission statement, a cri de coeur and his own J’accuse.
The subject was the future of French cinema. The enemy was so-called quality filmmaking: ‘bourgeois cinema made by the bourgeois for the bourgeois.’ This was the reviled ‘cinéma de papa’ – faithful adaptations of literary texts, period novels and lavish romantic dramas. This was cinema without passion, intent or a single guiding principal other than tastefulness. This was, well, a surprisingly accurate description of Jane Campion’s new movie, Bright Star.
Campion was born, in New Zealand, three months after Truffaut’s broadside hit the newsstands. She spent her adult career making movies that were visually and politically provocative (from Sweetie to In The Cut), films that lived up to the passionate ideals of artistry and authorship established by Truffaut (ideals that would subsequently redefine the entire art of filmmaking and film criticism). Which is why her stumble with this anodyne Keats biopic is all the more harrowing.
The film, set in the grey, muck-sodden Hampstead of 1818, attempts to describe the all-consuming love affair between doomed Romantic poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his sparring partner Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). 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.
Here, though destined to be together, Keats and Brawne are repeatedly separated, in classic Jane Austen style, by increasingly tedious misperceived social slights: he thinks she’s falling for his best friend; she thinks he’s ignoring her by going to the Isle of Wight; he’s apoplectic when she gets a mysterious Valentine’s card; she spends the day crying when he fails to visit her. And so on and so on they go, ping-ponging hopelessly between fracture and rapture for nearly two solid hours of agony until Keats finally succumbs to tuberculosis and dies, off camera, in Rome.
Campion, of course, has repeatedly claimed that Brawne is her anti-Jane Austen heroine, and a decidedly modern protagonist. But this reading is simply impossible to justify in a character who takes to her bed in moments of doubt, and who shares just two chaste, tight-lipped kisses with a man who, famously, in his poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci, wrote lustily about making ‘sweet moan’ with his lover and placing her, all day long, upon his ‘pacing steed’.
As for the poetry itself? Watching the fey, fine-boned Ben Whishaw quietly channelling Keats’ title poem in the final scenes is about as meaningful as watching Anthony Hopkins paint ‘Guernica’ in Surviving Picasso, or Ewan McGregor announce, “I shall call it Ulysses!” in Nora. It is the last act of a desperate director, and the hopeless, corrosive trademark of the cinéma de papa.
Anticipation:
Enjoyment:
In Retrospect:
Shan't be telling my rugby chums I went to see this one. I definite chick flick. And as for the guy in the never changed Rupert Bear troosers pretending to be the Scottish Mr Broon, what a terrible accent. Nope, one thumb down from me.
Written by Flying Scot on November 7th, 2009 at 22:56
Not enough to rubbish the film in Little White Lies, the reviewer continues his attack in The Times. I get it, he doesn't like it, but to start the review referencing an essay from Cahiers Du Cinema, talk about bourgeois!
What a pretentious review.
Written by Frances on November 9th, 2009 at 13:54
What an awful, narrow minded review. The Truffaut essay dealt specifically with the future of French cinema as the reviewer rightly points out thus making the inclusion of this reference null, void and not even remotely relevant. A fine example of wafer thin film theory being stretched to beyond breaking point to criticise a film, which when examined closely, demonstrates a wonderful restraint in steering clear of the regular period piece cliches.
As for the complaint that the love affair wasn't portrayed more explicitly may I suggest the reviewer checks out Catherine Brelliat's The Last Mistress for his period porn fix.
Written by horatioalgar on November 9th, 2009 at 13:59
"The Truffaut essay dealt specifically with the future of French cinema as the reviewer rightly points out thus making the inclusion of this reference null, void and not even remotely relevant."
I don't agree.Truffaut identified a certain type of cinema that he thought France needed to move away from and he did id very eloquently. If Kevin sees the same problems in Bright Star, then the reference is sound and helpful. I've not seen Bright Star but I now understand what Kevin thought was wrong with it. That's something I value in review.
Written by Jon on November 9th, 2009 at 20:31
Lets be honest about this. You don't like this film because you do not consider the trials of a doomed love affair to be worthy of consideration; this is probably because you are an insecure man who is using a platform granted to you to review films to pathetically, and transparently, assert your masculinity. This was a well made film and Little White Lies should be ashamed to allow such a damaging and prejudiced review to dampen its otherwise essential and important work.
Written by Lucy Sheridan on November 12th, 2009 at 12:21
Could it not just be that Kevin didn't think it was very good?
Written by Bobby_Floyd on November 12th, 2009 at 14:41
It's not too bad ! I was expecting it to be awful after reading your review. There are good qualities here. Paul Schneider is funny.
Written by W Hughes on November 12th, 2009 at 15:43
No, I agree with Lucy. After seeing the film I think he is wrong on every point – it is not heritage cinema, but a heartfelt and poignant account of their relationship. I fail to see how the reviewer characterises the film as lacking passion (yes it is restrained, but would he rather have had the normal period drama adornments?) or how he describes it as being set in a 'much-sodden Hampstead of 1818' – for one thing the film spanns the years 1818-1821 and for another it follows the seasons; so, yes, we do see Hampstead 'muck-sodden' but we also see it bedecked with daffodils and bluebells in spring and early summer and in russet colours in autumn too.
Written by John Reynolds on November 12th, 2009 at 19:36
Actually I was respnonding more to this comment: "You don't like this film because you do not consider the trials of a doomed love affair to be worthy of consideration; this is probably because you are an insecure man who is using a platform granted to you to review films to pathetically, and transparently, assert your masculinity."
JR, you engaged with the points made in the review which is what this is all about. I didn't think Lucy's personal attacks on the reviewer's character or suggestions of dubious motives were accurate or fair.
Written by Bobby_Floyd on November 13th, 2009 at 12:42
Absolutely! Robust debate about a film is welcome, and only to be encouraged, but let's not speculate wildly about the psychological make-up of the contributors, or otherwise engage in character assassinations. Disagree with Kevin's view? Good – tell us why, and advance the discourse.
I might add that I say this with no axe to grind – I have not seen Bright Star yet (although this discussion certainly makes me want to do so all the more) and so have no opinion whatsoever on the film itself.
Written by Anton Bitel on November 13th, 2009 at 13:17
Fair play, you are both right – we should all learn from the mistakes of the Sun and stick to the facts.
Written by John Reynolds on November 13th, 2009 at 19:09
I found BRIGHT STAR to be tedious and dramatically slight in the extreme. There was no passion between the lovers (certainly not as conveyed by Campion) and the details of the doomed love affair were as impactful as a sneeze at twenty feet. I am a huge fan of Campion's THE PIANO and ANGEL AT MY TABLE, but her most recent work is sorely lacking and strangely inert. I agree with Kevin's review. Lucy's attack on Kevin is immature.
Written by PhantomofPulp on November 18th, 2009 at 19:00
Says narcissitic, daddy-didn't-love-me-enough feminist Lucy Sheridan. She must be a man hating, insecure pseud, who thinks that any man who expresses a critique not in sympathy with her own is beyond empathising with the romantic tendencies of others. Furthermore, she displays the censoring dogmatic shrillness of the true fascist. How am I doing, Lucy? See. It really is that easy to discern all those psychological flaws from one small piece of writing. You're welcome.
Written by Rooster Coburn on December 14th, 2009 at 18:55
This is the worst fim that I have seen through to the end credits..but I was driving. I longed for the death so that I could get out of the cinema . Not minx, more like static pug. Not romantic but tedious. 1/10
Written by hated it on January 17th, 2010 at 13:06