“Bright Star”: My Dissenting View
I wish I could agree that the just-released Jane Campion movie, “Bright Star,” was the near-masterpiece it’s being called. Yes, it’s luscious and stately — a clear meditation on some of the big themes of Romantic art and poetry. But it’s also idiosyncratic to a fault and pocked with cliches. The pictured Abbie Cornish, who’s Fanny Brawne, and Ben Whishaw, who’s John Keats, look marvelous in their pink-for-her, blue-for-him costumes. But I need more from a period film than incidental visual pleasures.
But I thought everyone was raving because it was a period film. I know they stay very true to the time in terms of skin exposure and norms. I do think that Keats was secondary to Brawne’s story.