(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was for a nocturne, a poem inspired by the nighttime, which I applied to the elegiac notes of a film about the poet John Keats.)

Do you see the stars in their scattered arrays,
Content to fluoresce and to wait between days?
Do you hear the leaves when they flap in the wind,
In summer so teeming, in harvest-time thinned?
Do you feel the stillness of worlds at their rest,
Of closed morning glories and birds in their nest?

I witness these wonders you once wrote about,
Before disease meddled to snuff your light out.
Distractions of day help my memories melt,
But when night becalms them, your absence is felt.
I’ll dream of you here, and though Heaven is light,
I hope you still cherish the joys of the night.
__________________

MPAA rating: PG

I thought it was about time I reviewed the film that placed #4 on my Top 12 Poems in Movies list. Bright Star is a film for poets and about poets, one that translates tender word to screen in the form of an intimate period piece. John Keats has never been among my favorite poets, but this film makes him more than a mere authorial name, chronicling his romance with Fanny Brawne during the final years of his short life.

Director and writer Jane Campion of The Piano fame was blessed with two outstanding leads in Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw, known as the latest Q in the James Bond franchise and as the voice of Paddington Bear. Cornish plays Brawne with some early traces of women’s lib in her attitude, proud of her fashion creations and her ability to earn a living from them. On the opposite side of the self-sufficiency spectrum is Whishaw’s Keats, whose chosen profession as a poet is decidedly unprofitable, especially when his published poem Endymion flops. The two aren’t sure that their harmless flirting should continue any further, especially when Keats’s roommate and fellow poet Charles Brown (Paul Schneider) competes with Brawne for his friend’s attention. Soon, however, their romance begins in earnest, with swooningly passionate and eventually tragic results.

The early 19th-century costumes and details are elegantly faithful to the period and somewhat reminiscent of films based on the works of Keats’s contemporary Jane Austen.  Another point of comparison might be 1998’s Shakespeare in Love, also based on a literary figure and his love affair, but whereas that film was mostly fictitious and overrated, Bright Star has a greater biographical basis and instills passion into the mundane. No sex scenes are needed to accentuate Keats’s and Brawne’s relationship; it’s in their woodland walks and love letters that their fervent affection is felt. I especially loved one symbolic part that became a microcosm of doomed romance itself, as Brawne fills her bedroom with butterflies while exulting at every letter from Keats only for disenchantment to set in as the butterflies inevitably die.

Bright Star holds much poetic appeal, not only by quoting many of Keats’s works but by voicing his and Brown’s opinions on the nature of poetry and the writing process. “It ought to come like leaves to a tree, or it better not come at all,” says Keats at one point. The quiet tone may be too slow and melancholy for some, but Bright Star makes the most of its poignant themes, graceful cinematography, and brilliant cast, with Cornish and Schneider especially nailing the most emotional moments. It’s not quite among my favorite films ever, but it’s an underrated gem that I’ll always be fond of and one all fans of poetry ought to see.

Best line: (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 an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery.”  (Fanny Brawne) “I love mystery.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

© 2017 S.G. Liput
471 Followers and Counting

(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was for a personal portrait of someone special, like someone who is a picture of unselfish love.)

Some people are draining and take what they can
Till you’re not sure how your acquaintance began,
But some, if you’re lucky, replace what you’ve lost
And give and love further, not counting the cost.

She’s one of those people, those angels on earth,
Who don’t get the credit or gold that they’re worth.
Where others step back in repulsion or fear,
She’ll take two steps forward, concerned and sincere.

When I was convinced I was flawed to my core,
She gave me the hope that I still could be more.
When I came to learn happiness can’t be bought,
She showed me that lonely need not be my lot.

Such lessons are simple, but we the unwise,
With no one to teach us, are quick to trust lies.
If all were like her, by such love overrun,
The clouds of this world could be scattered to sun.
__________________

MPAA rating: PG-13

It’s become something of a cliché for musical biopics to portray the rise and fall of their subjects, often lessening our opinions of them in the process, but Love and Mercy is just as concerned about its star rising again as it is about the initial fall. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys is played by two different actors, Paul Dano as Wilson in the mid-1960s and John Cusack as his older 1980s self. Instead of depicting the two time periods one after the other, they alternate in advancing their stories of a man whose talent and success weren’t enough to conquer his demons on his own.

Both actors and storylines have their strengths. Dano does an outstanding job at representing Wilson at his most creative, tired of his usual surf music and eager to experiment on his personal pet project, which becomes 1966’s Pet Sounds. Here we get a rare look at a musician’s creative process that goes beyond just thinking up lyrics; the laborious spontaneity of the recording studio and a personal piano brainstorm of “Good Vibrations” capture the spirit of Wilson’s musical genius, which was challenged by his family and sadly marred by drugs and a wrongly diagnosed mental disorder.

Beyond the artistic insights of Dano’s parts, the film’s emotional core lies in the relationship between Cusack’s older Wilson and Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), who meet while Wilson is under the controlling care of Dr. Eugene Landy (domineering Paul Giamatti). My VC had trouble understanding why Melinda would have any interest in Wilson, who is presented as acting strange and unstable from Landy’s overmedication. Yet that is what makes Banks and the real-life Melinda so admirable: she wasn’t a gold-digger or an opportunist like Landy. She had every reason and right to leave Wilson to his fate, but she instead became his way out and transformed his life for the better through her love and perseverance, laudably brought to life by Banks. She’s the kind of patient, positive influence that we wish for all troubled souls to find, even if they rarely do. Taking a line from Wilson himself, God only knows what he’d be without her.

Love and Mercy is marred somewhat by the psychedelic miasma of the drug scenes, which is compounded at times by the nonlinear storyline and both Brians’ odd behavior. It isn’t how I’d want all biopics to be told, but for something unique in an all-too-familiar genre, Love and Mercy harnesses the talents of its subject and its actors for an ultimately inspiring tale of professional and personal salvation.

Best line: (1980s Brian, to Melinda) “I want you to leave, but I don’t want you to leave me.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

© 2017 S.G. Liput
466 Followers and Counting