Bright Star Review

Bright Star is a beautiful film about the poet John Keats' friendship with his neighbor, and eventual betrothed, Fanny Brawne, that blossomed into love and tragically ended too soon when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. It stars the mesmerizing Ben Whishaw as Keats and Abbie Cornish as the endearingly loveable Fanny.

The only other film I've seen this year that resonates as much is The Hurt Locker. Possibly because they were both directed by women, or due to the fact that it's on the complete other end of the spectrum in terms of dramatic cinema, but this movie was an incredibly powerful love story, that inspired some of Keat's best work and still resonates today. This movie is a work of art about art, and simply does not get any more beautiful.

My rating: 9.9/10

Bright star!

"Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death."

-John Keats