So Bright and Delicate

I first watched Bright Star when I was alone and tired, munching on crackers and feeling deliriously out of my mind. I was half-submerged in a sea of blankets after returning from two parties that night, ready to fall asleep after making the half-hour trek in high heels back to my bedroom. It was exhausting, but I put this movie on and let it numb me to sleep. Of course, it was all in a very good way.

I hadn't paid any attention to poetry before I came to university. I used to be one of those people who refused to touch a poem because it was too naive, too contrived. That's all bullshit, of course. Read some of Shakespeare, some of the Romantic poets, and you'll understand why I've chosen to relentlessly love my major. 

Bright Star is a film by Jane Campion. It stars Ben Whishaw (pictured above, basking in some trees like it's nobody's business) and a raven-haired Abbie Cornish. Both are cited as incredibly young and gifted actors who present the love story of one John Keats and one Fanny Brawne with such beautiful and heartbreaking sincerity that it made me haplessly wish I had my own tragic love story, if only for the letters I would gain from it.

That's why I bought So Bright and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne today. It gets me every time that he died at 25 while away from the love of his life. (What gets me more than that is how I keep going back to this film, despite my reservations of cynicism and bitterness about love.)

Watch this video below. Watch the film. Just watch it all, like I know I will be tonight.