Bright Star

Last week I had to see my Thanksgiving movie on Friday, due to work circumstances on Wednesday and the Jazz game on Thursday. But boy am I glad I waited, because even though I'm sure I would've like the movie I was originally going to see, The Informant!, it was no longer playing on Friday and I had to search for something else. Being a self-proclaimed and called film snob, I wasn't going to just go see anything. I decided to head downtown to The Broadway and see a lovely little film, Bright Star, about the poet John Keats and his love, Fanny Brawne.

I loved it.

The movie is gorgeous visually and heartbreaking emotionally. Cinematographer Greig Fraser has created a movie that is luscious and beautiful, while director and screenwriter Jane Campion has fashioned a story (based entirely on the letters John Keats wrote to Fanny and his poems) that is entirely real, true, aching, and .

The love these two had for each other was so strong and powerful that I can't help but envy them. To feel so passionately for someone, to have your life entwined with theirs, is something magical. I love how their love story plays out; from the perfect awkwardness of first meeting someone, wondering if they feel the same, to reaching that level of comfortableness and mutual love. The film is not at all sappy or stuck in the notions of the time of having to marry for money, even if the trailer would have you think differently. The trailer actually sells the film short; I like this review better.

I left the movie theater completely caught up in the story, and not a little bit infatuated with John Keats himself and the actor playing him, Ben Whishaw. I then went to the bookstore and looked for John Keats' poems. The obsession has begun.

I'll take being called a film snob if it means seeing movies like this.