by Malia » Thu Apr 05, 2007 5:38 pm
Dks, as far as the supernatural aspect of a Keats movie is concerned, I always thought it would be cool to "get inside his head" while he is composing--that this composition would maybe initially be a way for him to retreat from his painful existence but while inside the "dream" of poetry, he would come to experience truth and beauty--in that light and shade way of his. Here's an example straight out of the Ward biography: Keats is working on re-tooling Hyperion (into the Fall of Hyperion). He's becoming ill with TB, it's beginning to freak him out, just working on Hyperion reminds him of his dead brother--and as he wanders into the fantasy of the poem itself--wandering through it as if in a dream--he comes upon Moneta. She tells him he must make it to the steps of the temple or die. He does so and when he makes it up the stairs and looks at the veiled figure with awe, he asks her how he should be so saved from death. She then reveals herself--with eyes glowing benign like the mild moon and in her face, he sees the image of his own mother--dead and yet so palpably alive in everything he does. It could be a powerful image.
I also would like to utilize the concepts of light and shade throughout the movie--interwoven into the action, as it were, rather than set apart as some kind of hard-hitting monologue. For example, the moment when Keats and Fanny first express their mutual love for one another, it should be cold and stormy outside--a very gray, wintery Christmastime. And yet Keats and Fanny display and express the warmth, the heat of a new love with their emotions.
Again, when Tom dies--we perhaps get a glimpse of Keats staring at the cold, dead body of his young brother and then, as he walks along to Brown's house to tell him Tom is dead, it could be a glorious--unseasonably warm and beautiful day. That would really drive home at least one of Keats's poetical philosophies in a very palpable way.
Stay Awake!
--Anthony deMello