More than 15 years after directing "The Piano," the Oscar winning writer Jane Campion is back in top creative form with a chaste love story in "Bright Star," to be limited release today, only at San Francisco bay area theaters.
Initially, "Bright Star" appears to be adapted from the best book Jane Austen never wrote. But it’s an original work, based on the three-year real-life love affair between 19th-century English romantic poet John Keats(Britain's Ben Whishaw) who believes in "the holiness of the heart's affections" and the love of his life, Fanny Brawne(Australia's Abbie Cornish), the exuberant girl next door, whose deep, passionate affair never gets beyond hand-holding and stolen kisses, before the poet died from tuberculosis at age 25. Both make this chaste relationship burn like fire.
More admirable than emotionally affecting with its gorgeously framed shots and superb craftsmanship, "Bright Star" is a thing of beauty, beautiful in the rarest of ways. The heartwrenching emotion in this movie was unlike any other. Passions that are too formidable to control, and too dangerous to let loose -- these are the themes that drive Jane Campion's work. She went far beyond the usual "I am deeply in love; Now I am sad" and truly captured human idiosyncrasy as she delved into the illogical, irrational minds of two young and suddenly in love individuals. This film perfectly embodied how a simple, real, profound story should be told.
In the sensual and womanly-wise period drama "Bright Star" is the most generic historical romance ever put to film, or at least it feels like it. The movie is an ode to poetry and love, and indeed lyrical, in the best sense. The New Zealand-born filmmaker has performed her own feat of romantic imagination, and her beautiful high-strung romance "Bright Star" has a rhythm all its own, and unequivocally celebrates the joys of poetry. It may not be a joy forever, but it will do until the next joy comes along.
Initially, "Bright Star" appears to be adapted from the best book Jane Austen never wrote. But it’s an original work, based on the three-year real-life love affair between 19th-century English romantic poet John Keats(Britain's Ben Whishaw) who believes in "the holiness of the heart's affections" and the love of his life, Fanny Brawne(Australia's Abbie Cornish), the exuberant girl next door, whose deep, passionate affair never gets beyond hand-holding and stolen kisses, before the poet died from tuberculosis at age 25. Both make this chaste relationship burn like fire.
More admirable than emotionally affecting with its gorgeously framed shots and superb craftsmanship, "Bright Star" is a thing of beauty, beautiful in the rarest of ways. The heartwrenching emotion in this movie was unlike any other. Passions that are too formidable to control, and too dangerous to let loose -- these are the themes that drive Jane Campion's work. She went far beyond the usual "I am deeply in love; Now I am sad" and truly captured human idiosyncrasy as she delved into the illogical, irrational minds of two young and suddenly in love individuals. This film perfectly embodied how a simple, real, profound story should be told.
In the sensual and womanly-wise period drama "Bright Star" is the most generic historical romance ever put to film, or at least it feels like it. The movie is an ode to poetry and love, and indeed lyrical, in the best sense. The New Zealand-born filmmaker has performed her own feat of romantic imagination, and her beautiful high-strung romance "Bright Star" has a rhythm all its own, and unequivocally celebrates the joys of poetry. It may not be a joy forever, but it will do until the next joy comes along.
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