Film depicts free verse love in England

While the number of female screenwriters and directors of motion pictures is abysmally small, there are rare, extraordinary women artists who have broken into the boys club of movie-making. Jane Campion is one such auteur.

As a female filmmaker who makes movies primarily about women, her career is an excellent starting point for a dialogue about women in cinema. Not all of her films have been well-received, but those of note have been met with abounding critical praise. Her two most successful features—“Bright Star,” released just last month, and her 1993 masterpiece “The Piano”—will be, respectively, the subjects of this column and the next. As a highly regarded female filmmaker with a critical success currently in theaters, she is more than worthy of closer analysis.

Most of the enduringly popular female characters in period piece films like “The Other Boleyn Girl” do not fit in well with their contemporaries. They are the sorts of characters typically played by Keira Knightley—the Elizabeth Swanns of the cinematic world. Strong, determined women who will not settle remain popular because they possess qualities that would have been unbecoming at the era in which the movie is set.

Fanny Brawne, the heroine of “Bright Star,” does not fall into that category. A young woman from a privileged family living in 1820s England, she is nonetheless exceptional in her own way—she designs and sews all of her own dresses, for instance, and those dresses are far from demure.

Most notably, she falls in love with the penniless, unsuccessful poet living next door instead of one of the dashing young officers who populate her circle. Although we know John Keats as one of the greatest Romantic poets, he was, to most, a mere social curiosity at the time.

Those basic plot details, however, do not tell the whole story. Fanny does not chafe under the restrictions that society has placed upon her. In fact, she delights in them. She is not initially interested in poetry or other study, but rather loves to dance and flirt. She is firmly entrenched in the feminine sphere of domesticity and happy there without ever coming across as weak or repressed.

When she meets Keats, she is immediately intrigued but not infatuated, and the feeling is clearly mutual. They grow tentatively closer until their passion for each other simmers, agonizingly, just out of sight. Fanny claims to have developed a fascination with poetry, but reads only Keats’ works. She experiences no life-changing intellectual moment, as her interest is purely emotional.

The scene when they finally do admit to their shared affection is quiet and in many ways unremarkable, but to them and to the audience, it feels like an explosion. We believe wholly in Fanny’s love for Keats, and his for her, and as the film draws towards its conclusion, the other characters come to the same realization.

Despite the fact that their union would have been socially frowned upon, even Fanny’s reluctant mother eventually gives them her blessing. Without breaking nearly any of the rules that dictate how she should lead her life, she succeeds in getting what she wants, and that is extraordinary.

Keats died at the age of 25, before he and Fanny could be married. In the aftermath of his death we see and hear the expressions of Fanny’s grief. They are almost unbearable to listen to and watch.

It is clear that she has been utterly destroyed by her love for a man, and there are some who would find fault with Campion for creating a heroine whose utter dependence on her male counterpart so crushes her. But Fanny is not dependent on Keats because she cannot navigate the world without him. She is dependent on him because she has chosen love over security, deliberately pursuing the poet despite knowing that her life would be infinitely easier, but not better, if she traveled a more traditional path. There is no quality more honest or admirable.