A Little Period Drama

They have so much to say to each other, but so much is in between.

What would you do if your true love was lost when you were very young? Would you walk the heath for years, never marrying? Would you move on? Would you know that your entire life would be lived without you ever finding that kind of love again?

That’s the message I took from the movie “Bright Star,” written and directed by Jane Campion and based on the love affair poet John Keats had with his sometimes neighbor, Fanny Brawne. The pair lived centuries ago, so I feel safe in telling you that John Keats died of tuberculosis, which is a historical fact, and therefore not a spoiler. That he died within the tumult of the love affair is crucial to the story and is what makes the film important.

A love story that ends well is a romantic comedy, a light piece of work starring Sandra Bullock or Meg Ryan or one of those cute new actresses, fill in the blank because I barely ever go to the movies anymore and when I do, it’s surely not going to be wasted on the Starlet of the Month. But a love story that ends in tragedy has the potential to be Important, and have a Message.

Bright Star’s intended message is probably that “First Love Burns Brightest,” considering this line is written across all the promotional images. I saw the film at an industry screening after which the filmmaker herself participated on a Q&A panel. She sat regally and barely played with her long gray gypsy hair. She spoke with composure and light humor and I imagined Meryl Streep playing her in a movie about a woman struggling to make her mark on the film industry. Her intended message was that the romance between Keats and Brawne was powerful and compelling. I wouldn’t distill it into a one-sheet logline.

I read about “Bright Star” in a review from the Cannes Film Festival. Caught up by romantic tragedy as I so often am, I vowed to see it when it came to the United States, and then lucky me, I got to attend the screening. I braced myself with a funny friend and a tasty cosmo, and perhaps those things buffered my reaction, because I was not swelling with emotion during the film as I had expected. The dialogue was delicious, the costumes a feast for the eye, the drama unfolding with restraint. But it did not sweep me up into the romance. Perhaps it was that restraint that held me back, after all.

When Fanny learns of John’s death, however, the rendition of her emotions as performed by actress Abbey Cornish was as difficult to watch and as impossible to turn away from as Claire Danes’ Juliet at the end of “Romeo + Juliet.” Her grief sobbed its way out of the screen and took hold of my heart and any lack of connection to the film that I had noticed was gone in that one moment. Cornish’s Fanny walks the heath, then, reciting Keats’ poetry as if to his ghost. She was so young, and then so alone.

What does it mean, then, when a couple that forms a perfect whole is suddenly rent in half? I used to say that as long as they are both alive, two people have the chance to reconnect, wherever they are in the world. But if one of them is dead, what then? There has to be something left in life for the surviving partner, even if the ultimate prize is gone.

I suppose the message I took from the movie isn’t really a message at all, but a list of questions. When a movie makes me wonder that way, that’s how I know it was worth the drive over the hill, the parking snafu, the silly Hollywood premiere disrupting traffic, the lines, the time away from the kids, and the late bedtime.