Bright star

It is a shame that French students don't get a chance to know more about John Keats's poetry while at school. On a freezing winter afternoon, perfect weather to go to the movies, I went to see Bright Star, directed by the Asutralian (or is it NZ?) Jane Campion. Starring Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne and Ben Wishaw (the amazing Jean Baptiste Grenouille in Perfume) as John Keats, the movie relates Keats's love affair before his tragic death in Rome, in december 1820. Maybe the movie tends to be too romantic...but not to my taste, as the dramatic dimension of Keats's life is totally represented here; there is no such thing as a "they happily lived together ever after" end, which is unfortunate because it would have meant that Keats didnt die aged 25 and would have written more sensual poems.. but the beautiful images and the strength of the characters played by Cornish and Whishaw makes you want to run straight to a bookshop and dive into his poetry...

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.