Six years after her last film, In The Cut, acclaimed New Zealand-born director Jane Campion returns with her sensuous new film, Bright Star. Like her previous films, the prize-winning The Piano (1993) and Henry James adaptation The Portrait of a Lady (1996), this is set in the 19th Century.
Yet this time the 55 year-old Campion takes us to Hampstead, in England, to tell the true-life story of the love affair between the poet John Keats and the seamstress Fanny Brawne.
With the couple beautifully played by Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish, along with able support from Paul Schneider as Keats’ confidante Charles Armitage-Brown, Bright Star represents a remarkable achievement by Campion.
Weaving words from Keats’ own poems into the very fabric of the text, she retells the life of one of England’s greatest Romantic poets through the eyes of the woman who loved him the most a life that was tragically cut short when Keats, at the tender age of 25, died of tuberculosis.
Below, Campion talks about what drew her to Keats and why she was wary of making a starchy period drama, as well as opening up about a tragedy in her own life that came in the wake of her Palme d’Or win for The Piano.
- Was John Keats a lifelong passion for you?
It was a little bit of stumbling, and a little bit of purpose. I actually just stumbled into this biography of Keats. I was researching the writing teacher in In The Cut, and I was writing the script and realised I had no knowledge of poetry. I felt like a bit of a fraud and I ought to try and learn something.
The thing you want to do when you’re writing a script is avoid writing. It’s too hard! So you try and read very long books, or do lots of housework! I started reading this Andrew Motion biography of Keats and I had no idea where I was heading.
I didn’t know much about him and I got half way through and he met Fanny Brawne. Keats starts off very anti-Romantic.
He hates the whole nonsense and business of women and men falling in love, talking in crazy ways, becoming completely stupid, more or less like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, acting like someone’s drugged.
So he was very anti-Romantic. Then he meets Fanny Brawne and everything changes. The story just overwhelmed me. I had no idea how touching it was, or his love letters. I found myself just sobbing at the end of it.
I think it was the thing of the both of them finding their lives just as he was losing his life, and she was losing her love. And for her to have committed herself to someone so completely at that age, no-one would want you after that.
Marriage would be very difficult. So I just thought, ‘Oh God! A period film. Why do I have to fall in love with this? Who cares about poetry? Even I don’t care about it! It’s an arcane art. People are terrified. I’m terrified.’
But then I couldn’t help it. I didn’t go away. I thought of the idea of telling the story through Fanny’s point-of-view, which stopped it being a biopic. But clearly meeting Keats through Fanny she didn’t like poetry either, so it was handy.
And finally her really liking the guy and thinking ‘Now what are you doing? What is it that you guys do? What do you mean by sly rhymes?’ I hope to, in a way the audience could have the opportunity of being introduced to poetry in a more seductive way than they are at school, by somebody like Keats who is so vibrant and passionate about it.
- Do you think it remarkable that he wrote his body of work in such a short period of time?
Yes, I think that outpouring of his is very extraordinary. Plus it’s also the time when he was falling in love with Fanny Brawne, so from my point of view I felt that was a missing part of the story, they never emphasised that.
They never mention that, the scholars. They took about the fact that Brown was paying for him, but it seems like a completely obvious thing that when you fall in love, there’s a confidence in the world, in yourself, in nature, someone loving you is very powerful, to think ‘Oh, this world is a good place.’
- Did you want to make this film in the romantic tradition?
It’s a hard thing to say what romantic means. Keats wasn’t interested in being romantic. He was interested in experiencing the world through the senses, and people called that romantic. It’s quite a different thing.
I think their love story is romantic in a way, because it’s tragic. That’s not what they imagined they were moving into. They were doing it because they could do nothing else. They had these feelings and they were honouring them.
And so I think romanticism is and then there is the cliché of romance, when you strive to be romantic. That’s where things go wrong for me. I don’t like that myself.
I find all sorts of things romantic, often not love. I find sometimes just being with another girlfriend, and sharing something, can feel very romantic to me, or with your child. A walk nature can even be a romantic cliché.
- This is your third film set in the 19th Century. Why the fascination?
I can’t really explain it. I grew up on 19th Century novels. I’ve also written and made lots of movies in the 20th Century four others. I don’t know if that really means anything. How many people are making space movies or apocalyptic movies?
- How did you feel, though, making a period film again?
I felt so sickened by it, a little bit. My designer and I were both quite anti-romantic, and we were going, ‘Oh, they look like hamsters dressed up!’ For me, it was alienating to begin with.
To see my young actors, who had just been in their normal clothes rehearsing, and suddenly they’re in these ridiculous costumes! I thought, ‘Oh my God, it looks like a Beatrix Potter story!’ I had that reaction to begin with.
So I had my own problem. Maybe that was helpful. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, how gorgeous look at that scene!’ I don’t feel any desire to fetishize the period quality of the costumes. I think it was just that they were wearing them.
The thing I like the most, whether it’s a period film or a modern film, is that you’re trying to create a world for your story. And the story we tell is a very controlled world. We might decide that we’ll only show bricks.
In a way you’re looking for a way to restrict your language visually. We know we’re strong in nature in England, and do that very well in any period because it hasn’t really changed. And we know we can do the interior of houses very well because they’re still there. But there’s no villages, there’s no towns, it was really difficult.
- And Hampstead probably looks a bit different now
Caroline, my English co-producer, went ‘Oh, you’ve made it look like an Italian hill town!’ I think in some ways we did. But I love the descriptions of the clothes they used to lay out all over Hampstead Heath.
It was a central place for the washing to be dried. We made it a brick town. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but it was an idiom for us, to restrict it visually.
- Have you ever considered what it would be like to live in that period?
I’d be dead. I’d have asthma! I wouldn’t survive.
- So why tell Keats’ story now?
- I think one of the deep reasons why I wanted to tell the story was that Keats, in a way, told me the point of life. Which is to be aware of your consciousness, aware of your imagination. And even in his short time on earth, I think he did that job, to honour it in a way.
And Mr Brown is interesting because he was a great foil for them. He could see there was something they couldn’t feel, and he wanted it but he didn’t have it, like Fanny or Keats had it.
He was kind of an oaf in a way, but he loved the sensitive, and he loved Keats. And he was kind and generous, and I guess jealous also of Fanny. I noticed it myself he could not see that Fanny loved Keats.
He could not see that it could be genuine. He couldn’t see it to the end, and that’s how the story goes. At the very end, he realised the Brawne family had shown Keats enormous kindness, a kindness that he couldn’t do because he wasn’t there at the very end. Fanny had been genuine and her maturity had been staggering as it developed.
- Did the development of the script happen swiftly?
It wasn’t quick. But on the other hand, I only wrote one draft of the script really. Then a few little fix-ups. I never wrote a second draft. What I did I waited and I did it like that.
So from the first idea to writing the script, that was maybe four years later. Then I wrote it in stages. It was quick. Then the financing, that was difficult.
It’s very difficult in America for the distributors to help audiences find these films. They’re competing against a lot of label films, which are easier to advertise, like Batman and Spider-Man and romantic comedies.
Very obvious genres that people are familiar with. And people don’t want a surprise or a shock a lot of people don’t. They want to hear it’s good.
- What was the most difficult thing about Bright Star?
I think the big struggle, and it was very rewarding, was the poetry. Getting to feel comfortable, and to trust my own responses to it Keats’ comments, what he writes about poetry in his letters, was very helpful.
He has this concept negative capability which is the art of staying in the mystery without searching after fact or reason. Just being comfortable with mystery. That’s the point.
- Were you wary about making a BBC style period drama?
I was a little concerned that we would slot into the genre too well. It’s a very well known genre as well. But it’s also useful for us because audiences are comfortable with that. They will know what to go to, what they were going to see, and hope we offer what we offer.
Maybe something a bit different. I’m not trying to change the world anymore. I’m just trying to see it as it is, and work with it.
- When were you trying to change the world?
I guess in my Nazi days! You want everyone to think the same as you. It’s ridiculous! You think that could be good. Then what a terrible idea!
- What made you cast Ben Whishaw?
He’s beautiful. His audition was pretty convincing. There were a lot of very gorgeous, young guys who were very keen on Keats. I was shocked. I thought it was a lot more arcane poetry than it seemed to be among young people.
It was almost like discovering a groovy new thing. Like archaeology they dig down and find these amazing treasures. Takes a little effort but it’s kind of thrilling.
- Was there a specific film of his that you saw?
I don’t know. I fell in love with Ben. It’s very easy to. I’d marry him if I could’ve. I suggested the idea. He’s interested. Be really outrageous, wouldn’t it? A little age difference we can live with it!
- And what about Abbie?
I can’t marry her! She seems to be pretty keen on Ryan. It was really interesting with Abbie. I think we’re both really strong, and that was the great strength for us, and a point of contest. I learnt a lot of humility from the experience like don’t fight with your actor.
Listen as well. I see my job as to do what I see and tell what I see. Tell the truth. I can’t force anyone to do anything. If they don’t like what I see and won’t do it, what can I do?
Nothing. But I’ll keep driving my point on. With Abbie, what I loved about her was that her own instincts were incredibly evolved and powerful and sometimes they were better than mine. It was a good choice, sometimes, to give way.
- Do you like working with these types of actors?
I love sensitive people. I feel quite afraid when I’m with insensitive people.
- Can you talk about your collaboration with Greig Fraser, your DP?
We made a little film together called The Water Diary. I’d seen a short film of his, which I really loved. And I just thought, ‘He’s a very sensitive guy.’ So we made a short film for the UN, and it was 15 minutes. It was like trainer wheels for this film.
He showed me a beautiful frame but I said, ‘Just forget about it. I don’t want that. It’s got to have a lot of awkwardness to it. I don’t want a frame that’s already beautiful. It’s already over for me.’ And it was an interesting problem for us.
We both loved photography and we’d look at a lot of photographs and discuss the qualities of them. I think he educated me as much as I did him. But the main thing was ‘Don’t get your trick box out. It’s not needed here.’
One thing you do when you get on a set is you try and do some of your old tricks to make everybody see how clever you are, and that you can do a complicated shot. So it’s quite confronting that are shots were almost all still, and there was nothing special about them.
- Compared to Portrait of a Lady, this film is a lot less stylised
Yes, that was much more stylish, and perhaps that suits that story more. This was more Bresson-inspired classical man-escape kind of thing. I found that very compelling and thought ‘That’s done very simply. You can trust it.’
He was very strong on texture. I have more of a love of visual architecture. And he won me over and taught me a lot about texture. For example, we’d go into the forest and I would say ‘There’s a great bough of a tree.
It’s a great shape, very expressive.’ And he’d say ‘Maybe not’ And take me over to what looked to me very similar stuff and would say, ‘This has a beautiful feeling to it.’ I’d look around but there were no shapes.
And he’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s the good thing about it. It’s got depth on it. When you put the lenses on it, you’ll feel the texture but you won’t be able to locate them anywhere. It will be around them.’ Then I saw the point of it. It has a mood to it.
- You’re often called a feminist filmmaker. How does that make you feel?
I don’t know what that really means anymore. I feel really bitter when I hear stories of mass rapes or child prostitution. Who can’t feel bitter about it, or angry? It’s natural. I think men feel like that too. It’s horrible.
- You’re the only woman ever to win the Palme d’Or. Are you surprised?
I think they made that one mistake and they won’t make it again! I can only joke about it because otherwise you cry. We can all do the maths. I don’t understand it anymore than you do. There’s only two possibilities.
One: women aren’t trusted to be directors by the industry. Or two: women are so smart that they realise the job’s so hard, and you have to sacrifice your whole life to your work. And they don’t want to do that.
- Did you feel lots of pressure after winning, though?
Well, I didn’t actually, no, but for very different reasons than you might think. I won that Palme d’Or, then two weeks later, I lost my baby. So it was like I was gone. I was gone. I was out of the world for a year, I’d say.
It meant nothing to me. It took me a long time maybe five years to realise I had done something in the world of film that was good, with the Oscars and that. And people would say, ‘It’s great you won an Oscar!’ But I didn’t know that, or know how rare it was. Every American wants an Oscar but for me it was, ‘Maybe Oscars are a cliché.’
- How did that tragedy effect you?
Look, I think it saved me. I honestly think I went in a direction that’s so much more interesting. I think anyone who has been through a big tragedy, what for them was a tragedy, you come out and you just know you’ve seen a different world. You don’t believe the same stories anymore.
You live in a different way. And that’s the way I want to be in the world. I think before I thought, ‘It’s such a great world. I’m a lucky person. Blah. Blah.’ Cross fingers. Everything’s going well. Then something like that happens and you realise death’s there.
Sadness is going to be there. And the places the pain takes you to are very powerful. If you ever wondered that you had love in you, you know you have. It brings you into a different emotional it did for me, anyway. I’d never leave it again, y’know.
- Are you ever able to control what your next film idea will be?
I don’t feel I’m in control of it, really. I have to feel a strong sense of attachment to an idea. They surprise me. They will occur to me this is what I love or this is what I want and I guess my job is just to honour that and try and do it.
In the case of In The Cut, I loved Susanna Moore’s book and I never thought about making that into a film. And I wouldn’t of. I knew there would be enormous opposition to that film, as well. I was talking to Nicole [Kidman] at the time, and she said, ‘I’m just dying to read something really exciting, or different or interesting.’
And I said, ‘Well, try this book it’s really great.’ And she phoned me back and said, ‘I’ve read it. Let’s get it. Let’s do it!’ I said, ‘Really? You know everyone’s going to hate it. I can promise you. I love it but’ And she said, ‘I don’t care! We’ve got a responsibility to do interesting, daring work that’s not safe work.’
And then Nicole didn’t do it! I was left with the project. I think she had some huge things going on in her life. She was going through a divorce and was feeling really fragile, I think. Some things change.
She didn’t feel like being really radical that day! She was ready for no more America’s Sweetheart. She was looking for a way of saying ‘Forget about me, America!’ Or something of that nature.
She was very attracted to the character. So in that case, I don’t think it really represented where I am personally. But you can honour work that you admire, no matter what.
I was heading towards this Keats vision of life, more about sensitivity, honouring things like that, tendernessI find that more powerful and moving for me than anything else. I discovered poetry while I was making In The Cut.
Bright Star is released on DVD on 8 March from Pathe Productions Ltd
Six years after her last film, In The Cut, acclaimed New Zealand-born director Jane Campion returns with her sensuous new film, Bright Star. Like her previous films, the prize-winning The Piano (1993) and Henry James adaptation The Portrait of a Lady (1996), this is set in the 19th Century.
Yet this time the 55 year-old Campion takes us to Hampstead, in England, to tell the true-life story of the love affair between the poet John Keats and the seamstress Fanny Brawne.
With the couple beautifully played by Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish, along with able support from Paul Schneider as Keats’ confidante Charles Armitage-Brown, Bright Star represents a remarkable achievement by Campion.
Weaving words from Keats’ own poems into the very fabric of the text, she retells the life of one of England’s greatest Romantic poets through the eyes of the woman who loved him the most a life that was tragically cut short when Keats, at the tender age of 25, died of tuberculosis.
Below, Campion talks about what drew her to Keats and why she was wary of making a starchy period drama, as well as opening up about a tragedy in her own life that came in the wake of her Palme d’Or win for The Piano.
- Was John Keats a lifelong passion for you?
It was a little bit of stumbling, and a little bit of purpose. I actually just stumbled into this biography of Keats. I was researching the writing teacher in In The Cut, and I was writing the script and realised I had no knowledge of poetry. I felt like a bit of a fraud and I ought to try and learn something.
The thing you want to do when you’re writing a script is avoid writing. It’s too hard! So you try and read very long books, or do lots of housework! I started reading this Andrew Motion biography of Keats and I had no idea where I was heading.
I didn’t know much about him and I got half way through and he met Fanny Brawne. Keats starts off very anti-Romantic.
He hates the whole nonsense and business of women and men falling in love, talking in crazy ways, becoming completely stupid, more or less like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, acting like someone’s drugged.
So he was very anti-Romantic. Then he meets Fanny Brawne and everything changes. The story just overwhelmed me. I had no idea how touching it was, or his love letters. I found myself just sobbing at the end of it.
I think it was the thing of the both of them finding their lives just as he was losing his life, and she was losing her love. And for her to have committed herself to someone so completely at that age, no-one would want you after that.
Marriage would be very difficult. So I just thought, ‘Oh God! A period film. Why do I have to fall in love with this? Who cares about poetry? Even I don’t care about it! It’s an arcane art. People are terrified. I’m terrified.’
But then I couldn’t help it. I didn’t go away. I thought of the idea of telling the story through Fanny’s point-of-view, which stopped it being a biopic. But clearly meeting Keats through Fanny she didn’t like poetry either, so it was handy.
And finally her really liking the guy and thinking ‘Now what are you doing? What is it that you guys do? What do you mean by sly rhymes?’ I hope to, in a way the audience could have the opportunity of being introduced to poetry in a more seductive way than they are at school, by somebody like Keats who is so vibrant and passionate about it.
- Do you think it remarkable that he wrote his body of work in such a short period of time?
Yes, I think that outpouring of his is very extraordinary. Plus it’s also the time when he was falling in love with Fanny Brawne, so from my point of view I felt that was a missing part of the story, they never emphasised that.
They never mention that, the scholars. They took about the fact that Brown was paying for him, but it seems like a completely obvious thing that when you fall in love, there’s a confidence in the world, in yourself, in nature, someone loving you is very powerful, to think ‘Oh, this world is a good place.’
- Did you want to make this film in the romantic tradition?
It’s a hard thing to say what romantic means. Keats wasn’t interested in being romantic. He was interested in experiencing the world through the senses, and people called that romantic. It’s quite a different thing.
Tagged in Jane Campion