
Those stills, Malia! Wheee those are brilliant! *jumping up and down clapping like a little girl with excitement!*
I'm definitely with Malia on how things are shaping up with this movie. I'm reminded of a comment that I believe Milos Foreman made with regards to casting
Amadeus. It's about finding someone who can
embody the roll more than anything. You can spend all the time you want finding a spitting image of a historical figure, but can that person act? Will that person
become the character? Personally, I could care less if Ben Whishaw doesn't look exactly like Keats so long as, when I have the experience of seeing and hearing him on screen, he can
convince me that he is Keats, regardless of what color his hair is or if his chin is a little scruffy around the edges. I think that's the most important thing here, and it's impossible to make that kind of judgement simply from still images.
With regards to his height, I think we also have to account basic physiological shifts that have occurred since Keats' day. Ben Whishaw is, what, 5'7"? 5'8"? These days, that's considered relatively "short" for a man, especially when we're talking about screen actors. A 5'0" man today is something of an oddity. We can see clearly enough from the photos that he's standing about eye-to-eye with Fanny, which I think is accurate enough to the descriptions. Plus, we have yet to see him next to any of the other male characters in the story. Cast enough of your typical actor types at 5'11" and 6'0" alongside Mr. Whishaw and he's going to be noticeably short.
And Malia's right: this is Fanny's story, not Keats'. The image we're going to get of Keats, then, is going to be a filtered one: we'll not see him as he sees himself--the Keats we know from his letters and from biographers and from other accounts--but as Fanny sees him. That by itself is a fascinating prospect, I think: it's a different perspective from the one we're used to getting. I just finished reading a historical novel about Nannerl Mozart, the older sister of the composer. Although I wouldn't go out there and say that it's a great book, it's still an extremely interesting idea to look at the more famous individual through the eyes of a supporting character. Yes, sometimes it's frustrating to see a beloved idol "taken down a peg" by means of interpretation, but isn't that the way life is? Will not everyone's existence only go so far as the as the reflection it casts on others? As the great Stacey and Clinton of
What Not To Wear would say, "We cannot control how we are perceived, only how we are presented." Or something like that.

I do have to say, though, the one at the link that Malia posted of Fanny standing over Keats as he writes at the little table with his legs crossed did have me thinking, "Now, THAT is Keats." Perhaps it's because the pose reminds me a bit of Severn's famous posthumous portrait of Keats reading at Wentworth Place.
