bright star

Bright Star is my second installment of movies that should have won an oscar in march. this one is about  the poet John Keats, whose house I recently visited (but didn't get to go inside) in London. the movie itself is a poem, and is so beautiful I could die. Really, I think I could. It is the most literary-based movie i've ever seen: Keats' poetry is integrated perfectly into the script.

It balances simplicity and drama in such a perfect way.

John Keats: I had such a dream last night. I was floating above the trees with my lips connected to those of a beautiful figure, for what seemed like an age. Flowery treetops sprung up beneath us and we rested on them with the lightness of a cloud. 

Fanny Brawne: Who was the figure? 

John Keats:  I must have had my eyes closed because I can't remember. 

Fanny Brawne:  And yet you remember the treetops. 

John Keats:  Not so well as I remember the lips. 

Fanny Brawne:  Whose lips? Were they my lips?

Fanny Brawne: I still don't know how to work out a poem. 

John Keats: A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving into a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out, it is a experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery. 

Fanny Brawne: I love mystery.

You don't have to work through a poem, systematically, to know that or how it affects you. I did get a bit emotional when i heard Ben Whishaw's reading of Ode to a Nightingale. I'm not necessarily proud of that fact, but there it is just the same. And here it is, if you'd like to listen. See if it doesn't strike a certain cord. I bet it will.