Oh my goodness.
You know when people first started making cookie dough ice cream, and your first thought was, " Good God, what a stunning combination of two amazing things coming together to form one MASTER amazing thing?!"
Like a cyborg/werewolf/giant hybrid, which is clearly more than the sum of its parts, to mix metaphors, it was both a genius and a joyous coming together, right?
Well that's sort of how I feel about Jane Campion making a movie about the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawne.
Jane Campion, a Kiwi who now lives in Australia, is a director and, dare I say it without cringing?, an Artist who manages to make fascinating, beautiful, competent films about women.
Her first time at the Cannes Film Festival, she won the coveter Palme D'Or for her short film "Peel." Then, and this is probably what you might know her from, her full-length feature "The Piano," which also won the Palme D'Or, as well several Academy Awards.
She manages to make feminist films that have nuance and balance, never falling into didacticism or the shallower depths of the politically effective.
Anyway. I heart.
And as for Keats, and Keats and Brawne, well... I just can't even get into that here.
Suffice it to say, I am both thrilled and terrified to see "Bright Star" -- and not because I'm worried I won't like, but that it will leave me as a mere jellyfish, rather than a human woman.
Observer, this New York Times story:
In Ms. Campion’s film, the bright star is Fanny, played by the Australian actress Abbie Cornish as a girl more passionate about sewing and fashion than poetry. This 19th-century romance resonates: at the end of the screening, there were few dry eyes. [...] Fanny blooms with health and beauty, while the poet, played by Ben Wishaw, withers away: tuberculosis killed him at 25. His last sonnet, “Bright Star,” was written on the ship that took him to Rome, where he died.
If this sounds like it's verging on the sentimenal, trust me, it's not. I can explain it all to you over a glass of wine.
Here you can observe my previous post on this. This one's for you, avb!
2 comments:
Things I love about this post:
1. The comparison to cookie dough ice cream. Because, well, genius.
2. This sentence: "She manages to make feminist films that have nuance and balance, never falling into didacticism or the shallower depths of the politically effective."
3. My shout out!
I totally agree with the use of the word artist to describe J.C. I do hate it normally, but it is one that suits her.
My Jane Campion circle will be complete if they ever release that short film she did at University called "Tissues." It's the only one I haven't seen.
And, John Keats, sigh.
I will cry during this movie. I will probably cry during the PREVIEWS of this movie. I cried, with big blubbery tears, in my gym clothes, in our Romantic Poetry class when Darlington read the description of Keats' death, and then I cried in the bathroom after. Keats makes me cry cry cry.
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