by Luanne Paul King

Bright Star

When New Zealand writer and  director Jane Campion decided she didn’t know enough about poetry, even though her mother was a poet, she read all of John Keats, the English romantic poet in the early 1800s. She was captivated by his poem that began:

Bright Star! would I were stedfast as thou art —

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores …

Campion decided to write a film about the prolific poet who died at 25. She cast Ben Whishaw as Keats and Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne, a talented dress designer. When Keats and friend Charles Brown (Paul Schneider) move next door, Keats and the beautiful Fanny fall in love. In that era, affection could only be expressed in a muted way. Yet, with the consummate acting, we feel Keats’ and Fanny’s deep love.

The film has vibrant characters — young and old — who lovingly look after each other, dance and play, love nature, travel long distances and write letters. Keats wrote, “A thing  of beauty is a joy forever.” So is this film a joy forever.

119 minutes. Rated PG.

The Piano

This film is an intense look at disparate characters fatefully thrown together in a Victorian village in 19th–century New Zealand. They are Scots widow Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), who is mute although not deaf; her astute 9-year-old daughter Flora (Anna Paquin), who communicates with her mother through sign language; British emigrant Alistair Stewart (Sam Neill), who has arranged by mail to marry Ada; George Baines (Harvey Keitel), a depressed land overseer; and tattooed Maori living in a haunting forest. When Ada and Flora arrive, seamen carry them ashore through rough surf and unload luggage and Ada’s piano onto the beach. Then they leave! Ada uncrates the piano to assure it survived the voyage and begins playing  it; we feel the intensity of her connection with her piano.

When Alistair Stewart arrives the next day, he refuses to haul the piano, claiming it’s too big. Ada is  furious. Later, the lonely Baines offers to trade land for the piano and lessons from Ada; Stewart accepts. Director Campion leads us into the undertow of Baines’ and Ada’s buried emotions. The lessons become sexually charged. When Flora exposes the lovers, there is a life-changing climax for all the characters.

Jane Campion won the Palm d’Or at Cannes for this film. Hunter and Paquin won Oscars for their performances; so did Campion for her screenplay.

120 minutes. Rated R. Available on DVD.