It starts off with bonus points (for me, anyway), since it stars willowy hotty Ben Whishaw.
Ben is playing poet John Keats, who is destined to die a miserable death in his early twenties, while believing himself a failure.
Whereas, if this film is to be believed, he found his Lifelong Soul-Mate and One True Love (played by Abbie Cornish), with whom he exchanged lots of wistful looks while not getting down and dirty, all the better to torture themselves with their own abstinence.
Cornish plays his love interest as having an almost insane obsession with the latest weft and weave of fashion, her head as empty of thought as it is of meaningful emotion. She -- and he -- are, in fact, emotional cripples, as absurd as the fashions they are made to wear in this, one of the most egregious recent examples of that genre now known as Bonnet Porn.
Whishaw is such a good actor he almost -- almost -- manages to make us believe in his Keats. But it is a hopeless task.
As I watched Bright Star I was increasingly mystified by the critical laurels it has gained, since it reminded me of nothing so much as a 1970s Sunday afternoon made-for-adolescents/grannies mini-serial. Even the dredged-out colours felt more 1970s than 1810s.
4 comments:
ahem
i thought it rather fab. ahem.
am sort of seeing where you are coming from.
but sticking to my guns.
I wanted to like it, I really did, especially when some of my colleagues told me that all men hated it. But I couldn't get over that obsession with fashion.
And, after the Twilight films, I've had quite enough of people staring moodily into each other's eyes while practicing self-restraint.
And I don't mean "self-restraint" in an interesting way, either.
I have just seen a film called 'The Perfumer' and am thoroughly converted to attractions of B Whishaw-film iffy but he, great
darker in all ways but not unlike the aptly named Eddie Redmaine
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