Bright Star is the work of Jane Campion, the director of the Academy Award-nominated The Piano, a beautiful film that nevertheless left me cold and unaffected. There was no such effect this time. Bright Star is a dazzling film and one of the most engrossing love stories in recent memory. In 1993, Campion became only the second woman in history to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar. History just may repeat itself next March.

Bright Star is based on the final years of the Romantic poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his love affair with the girl next door, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). The year is 1818 and the 23-year-old poet is penniless. He gets by on the kindness of his friends, particularly the disagreeable Mr. Brown (Paul Schneider). When Keats and Fanny first meet, they don’t think very highly of each other (and she thinks even less of Mr. Brown). But when Keats’ younger brother falls ill, a victim of the dreaded disease tuberculosis, the two acquaintances find themselves drawn together.

Secretly, they began a passionate love affair, consummated only in hungry glances, stolen kisses and passionate letters. By the time those around them realize the woman of some means is attached to the ragamuffin poet without two cents to rub together, it is too late — their love only increases in direct proportion to the troubles they face. But there is one obstacle even their passion cannot withstand.

These sorts of period films are usually bled dry of emotion, as if the filmmakers assumed that a buttoned up society indicated an absence of genuine human feeling. But Campion understands that the greater the societal stoicism, the more fiery the emotions that bubble just beneath the surface. Her characters are vivacious creatures, bursting with life. A scene in which the two leads place their hands on the bedroom wall that separates them is infinitely more passionate than any sex scene could ever be. Though there is something quite naive and juvenile about the couple’s affections, it is that very thing that makes it so pure and innocent.

Ben Whishaw (I’m Not There, Brideshead Revisited) continues to prove that those who dubbed him one of the finest actors of his generation knew exactly what they were talking about. A frequent visitor to period pieces such as this, Whishaw, like his character in Bright Star, has a certain brooding drabness that masks a radiant lightness of being. His co-star, Abbie Cornish (Stop-Loss, Elizabeth: The Golden Age) is quite simply angelic. Cornish’s Fanny has a forthright mettle, much like the Austen heroine Elizabeth Bennett, though she is simultaneously startlingly vulnerable. This is the sort of role Kate Whinslet would have filled a decade or so ago, but the screen is not lacking for her absence. Cornish is impeccable as a fiery flirt, a doting lover and, when she loses her soul mate, a woman whose grief is titanic and unquenchable.

The supporting cast is no less perfect, especially Kerry Fox as Fanny’s mother, and Edie Martin and Thomas Sangster as her younger siblings. At every moment, Fanny’s family feels fully formed and authentic, as if a camera had somehow found a way to go back in time and capture their lives. But among the supporting cast, none is more impressive than Paul Schneider, an actor who continues to impress mightily film after film (The Assassination of Jesse James, Lars and the Real Girl, Away We Go). His Brown, while maddening, is a perfect foil to the lovers. That the North Carolina native can pull of such a broad Scottish brogue is all the more impressive.

From top to bottom, Bright Star’s crew deserves praise. Campion, who wrote the screenplay, channels Jane Austen in both tone and vigor, perfectly capturing the voice of Regency England. Keat’s poems are spoken aloud throughout the film, allowing his voice and words to seep into every nook and cranny of our experience (stay through the end of the credits to luxuriate in Whishaw’s reading of “Ode to a Nightingale”). Though physically chaste, Keats and Fanny’s relationship is a raging inferno, stoked by words of incomparable ardor.

Greig Fraser’s luminous cinematography evokes Vermeer, particularly those paintings the Dutch master composed near his studio window, such as “The Milkmaid.” Two shots in particular are so rapturous they warrant specific mentions: a scene in which Fanny’s mother and an older maid are seen looking outside at Keats in the rain, and another in which Fanny falls back upon her bed, her drapes and her dress billowing by the hand of some unforeseen gust of wind.

Campion’s words and Fraser’s visuals are matched perfectly by newcomer Mark Bradshaw’s plaintive, melancholy score and by Janet Patterson, who handled both the exquisite sets and the rapturous costume design.

It would have been so easy for Campion to let herself be carried away by the material, as so often happens in films set amongst aristocratic accents and patrician attire. But Campion instead shows remarkable restraint, allowing our focus to synchronize not with the opulent outward world but with the characters heartbreakingly passionate and deeply emotional inward world. The result is one of the finest films about the life of an artist ever made.

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.