Bright Star

Watched Bright Star (2009) on Saturday night. Imdb.com’s rating of 6.9 would be perfect without the full stop. For me, it was amazing; made for me. Objectively, it was not amazing, but it was very pleasant, very thought-provoking, very enjoyable, very touching and very watchable.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0810784/

Observations / annotations:

1.  The film starts with my favourite piece of music ever: Mozart’s “Serenade for Winds”. One of Mozzie’s Greatest Hits, I believe it had at least 10 weeks at No. 1 in Austria, Germany and the UK. The film/cover version starts at 2:30 of Soundtrack Part 3 below, but Ben Whishaw (Which Shaw? Whish… Shaw? Sure? We’re sure.) voices over with Ode to a Nightingale. It is repeated at a “dance”/rave/house party later in the film; a very pleasing re-mix with hints of techno and human beat box that commences at 4:55 of Part 1 directly below. It’s very sweet. But listen to the whole clip. Try not to melt too much when Keats/Whishaw “describes” poetry.

Herewith Soundtrack Parts 2 and 3:

2.  Keats calls his paramour, Fanny Brawne, “Minx”. (No jokes about Ms Brawne’s Christian name, please.)

3.  Someone’s been stealing my thoughts again!

[Mr Brown]  If Mr. Keats and myself are strolling in a meadow, lounging on a sofa or staring into a wall, do not presume we’re not working. Doing nothing is the musing of the poet.

[Fanny Brawne]  Are these musings what we common people
know as thoughts?

[Mr Brown]  Thoughts, yes, but of a weightier nature.

[Fanny Brawne]  Sinking thoughts?

[Mr Brown]  Not really, Miss Brawne. Musing, making one’s mind available to inspiration.

[Fanny Brawne]  As in amusing? Mr Brown, our thoughts are all very simple, so you never need worry about interrupting us.

Can one have a telepathic copyright?

4.  [Spoiler. Don't read on if you wish to feel the full impact of the film's conclusion.]

When Fanny learns of Keats’s death (tuberculosis, aged 25), she rushes out of the dining room and breaks down sobbing uncontrollably in the hall, unable to breathe and yelping for her mother. Half way through this, the ultimate scene of the film I had so been waiting for, my wife asks:

“How did he die?”

WHAT the-! Correct me if I’m wrong, but, to me, that’s like being in a cinema or theatre watching Romeo and Juliet and – just after Romeo has poisoned himself, and just before Juliet says “Yea, noise? then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die.” – someone shouting “Pass the popcorn, will ya!”

 

Ode to a Nightingale

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

 

Damn you, Keats, damn you! Damn your Nightingale and damn your Grecian Urn! Why did you have to be so true!

Here is your gravestone.

 

Yes, maybe your name was writ in water. But your work is etched in our hearts – forever.

Permission to sob, please? Yes, granted.

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