Bright Star

"First love burns brightest."

2009 1h 59m EN

👍

6.6

SOLID

★6.6TMDB · 494

DramaRomance

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

In 1818, high-spirited young Fanny Brawne finds herself increasingly intrigued by the handsome but aloof poet John Keats, who lives next door to her family friends the Dilkes. After reading a book of his poetry, she finds herself even more drawn to the taciturn Keats. Although he agrees to teach her about poetry, Keats cannot act on his reciprocated feelings for Fanny, since as a struggling poet he has no money to support a wife.

“First love burns brightest.”

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Cast

Abbie Cornish
Fanny Brawne
Ben Whishaw
John Keats
Paul Schneider
Mr. Brown
Kerry Fox
Mrs. Brawne
Edie Martin
Toots
Thomas Brodie-Sangster
Samuel
Claudie Blakley
Maria Dilke
Gerard Monaco
Charles Dilke

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Jane Campion
Writers: Jane Campion, Andrew Motion
Languages: French, English
Countries: Australia, United Kingdom

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 17 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: French, English.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

International production across 2 countries: Australia, United Kingdom.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Jane Campion, shot by Greig Fraser. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Mark Bradshaw. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Alexandre de Franceschi shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw and Paul Schneider carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "First love burns brightest.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Jane Campion directs. Greig Fraser behind the camera. Mark Bradshaw scores. Alexandre de Franceschi cuts. Profitable at the box office. Produced in Australia, United Kingdom. Dialogue in French, English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Released 17 years ago.
2Dialogue crosses 2 languages: French, English.
3International production across 2 countries: Australia, United Kingdom.
4Directed by Jane Campion, shot by Greig Fraser. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
5Original score by Mark Bradshaw. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
6Editor Alexandre de Franceschi shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
7Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw and Paul Schneider carry the top of the cast.
8Marketing tagline: "First love burns brightest.".
9IMDB entry: tt0810784 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

The technical file

Cinematography: Greig Fraser
Original score: Mark Bradshaw
Editing: Alexandre de Franceschi
Production design: Janet Patterson
Costume design: Janet Patterson
Makeup / hair: Konnie Daniel
Sound: John Dennison
Stunt coordinator: Glenn Marks
Runtime: 119 min · 1h 59m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $10,000,000
Box office: $14,374,652
Return: 144% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): PG
IMDB: Bright Star (2009)

Awards

AACTA Award for Best Production Design
AACTA Award for Best Costume Design
AACTA Award for Best Cinematography

Individual records documented via Wikidata; the summary above may count more.

Also by

Jane Campion

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Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

Andres Gomez2014-11-05
★ 6/10
Good performances from Cornish, Whishaw and Schneider for a folks and costums movie. You will enjoy it if you like the genre. If not ... well, probably it would be a slow and dull romantic drama for you.
tmdb280390232022-08-28
★ 4/10
Bright Star is the rare biopic of an artist that actually provides some insight into its subject’s craft. Usually, a film about a writer, including such recent examples as To Olivia (Roald Dahl) and The Laureate (Robert Graves), will approach the creative process as 99-percent inspiration and 1-percent actual work – and sometimes not even that. Writing is taken as matter of course; poems come out straight out of the author’s mouth, fully formed like Athena emerging from Zeus’s forehead. Bright Star doesn’t dismiss the notion of divine inspiration, but it does not tacitly take it for granted either; on the contrary, it acknowledges and articulates it (“If poetry does not come as naturally as leaves to a tree, then it had better not come at all”). Moreover, even though it declares “Poetic craft is a carcass, a sham,” it does so perhaps out of modesty (after all, “A poet is not at all poetical. He is the most un-poetical thing in existence. He has no identity”), before diving right into the crux of the craft itself (“A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery”). This is all great stuff, and writer/director Jane Campion displays a sincere love for poetry with which she infuses her characters (who not only commit their favorite poems to memory, but can even recite verbatim from literary reviews). The problem is that her cast themselves are un-poetical and have no identity, and while this might serve them well in their poetic endeavors, as characters it renders them dull and unappealing; Ben Wishaw is wishy-washy as John Keats, and although credit is due Campion for not depicting him as a proto-rockstar (unlike, for instance, Leo DiCaprio’s Rimbaud in Total Eclipse), she loses many points for portraying Keats’s romantic interest Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) as a proto-groupie (early on, in order to impress him, she quotes some of Keats’s verses back to him, as if he weren’t familiar enough with his own work). I’m aware that an artist’s love life, or lack thereof, tends to inform his creative output, but the romance between Wishaw and Cornish is so corny and mushy that we can’t believe such saccharine sentiment could ever translate into Keats’s sublime lyricism. Only Paul Schneider as the sardonic Charles Armitage Brown, Keats’s fellow poet, comes across as a sensible person who can tell the difference between poetry and real life; he starts out as boorish for the sake of boorishness, but he grows on us the more we realize that his contempt for the shallow Fanny is well-deserved (I especially enjoyed when he tricks her with a question about Paradise Lost’s non-existent rhymes).