Bright Star reviews, ratings etc. *SPOILERS*

[Ennis]

Raphael -
And share him I do!! I figure if I can turn on at least one kid a year to Keats, I'll die (preferably in Hampstead. . . ) a happy person. Believe it or not, "Bright Star" has actually helped do this very thing. The DVD was released here in January, and since then, I've had several students tell me they've rented and watched it. Of course, talking Keats up all the time, posting quotes from his letters and poems around the room and on the outside of my classroom door, and hanging the movie poster over my computer in my room has helped some, as well!!
Funny thing happened today in 5th period. We were wrapping up our study of Edgar Poe's "Annabel Lee" when one of my delightful students raised his hand and offered this insight (now, you must read this with a Western North Carolina mountain "twang"!!): "Ms. Norman, there's not a whole lotta difference between you and the poem's speaker 'cept you're obsessed with Keats and he's obsessed with his 'girlfriend.'" I had to laugh! I expect what helped that 12 year old boy make that connection was the story I told the class much earlier in the school year about visiting the Protestant Cemetery last summer and lying down on the grass next to Keats's grave. Needless to say, they thought I was crazy. Maybe I am; maybe I don't care. . .

[Raphael]

And share him I do!! I figure if I can turn on at least one kid a year to Keats, I'll die (preferably in Hampstead. . . ) a happy person.

Most excellent! You are enriching them by sharing our dear poet.

Believe it or not, "Bright Star" has actually helped do this very thing. The DVD was released here in January, and since then, I've had several students tell me they've rented and watched it. Of course, talking Keats up all the time, posting quotes from his letters and poems around the room and on the outside of my classroom door, and hanging the movie poster over my computer in my room has helped some, as well!!

I do indeed believe it! Do you show clips in the class? Also the CD is good- they could read Ode To A Nightingale alongside listening to Ben Whishaw read it and also La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
And do check out Michael Emmanuel's music put to La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Ode On A Grecian Urn on you tube...
He is a member of this forum and posted links to them. He is very good.

Funny thing happened today in 5th period. We were wrapping up our study of Edgar Poe's "Annabel Lee" when one of my delightful students raised his hand and offered this insight (now, you must read this with a Western North Carolina mountain "twang"!!): "Ms. Norman, there's not a whole lotta difference between you and the poem's speaker 'cept you're obsessed with Keats and he's obsessed with his 'girlfriend.'" I had to laugh! I expect what helped that 12 year old boy make that connection was the story I told the class much earlier in the school year about visiting the Protestant Cemetery last summer and lying down on the grass next to Keats's grave. Needless to say, they thought I was crazy. Maybe I am; maybe I don't care. . .

I hope the boy likes poetry lol. No, lying on the grass next to dear John's grave isn't crazy.. he would be glad to know he isn't forgotten.

[Pjerrot]

I was heartily disappointed when Bright Star never made it to theaters here. But one day I paid a visit to the CD/video store and found it on DVD there. I didn't hesitate to purchase it.

I'm glad that there are a number of teachers and professors out there sharing their love of Keats with their students. I considered pursuing a teaching career in English but didn't think I had the strength or the ability to teach consistently. As a music major I hope to one day compose a piece involving Keats somehow. (P.S. - It is raining now and the globed peonies in the yard are reminding me of "Ode on Melancholy").

[BrokenLyre]

Ennis,

I am so happy you are teaching poetry and Keats to your 8th graders. I taught 8th grade science and health for a year. Rough inner-city crowd. Hard to get Keats into the chemistry & physics curriculum.


You are not crazy going to the Protestant Cemetery in Rome and laying next to Keats. Great idea. I would love to have been there with you. I visited George Keats' grave in Louisville, Kentucky last year and had a hard time leaving (my family couldn't take me there more than half an hour). I drove a hundred miles out of the way on our trip and stayed overnight just to see Keats' grave.
People don't get it. I liked hearing your enthusiasm about Keats.

[Cybele]

Ennis,

I am so happy you are teaching poetry and Keats to your 8th graders. I taught 8th grade science and health for a year. Rough inner-city crowd. Hard to get Keats into the chemistry & physics curriculum.


You are not crazy going to the Protestant Cemetery in Rome and laying next to Keats. Great idea. I would love to have been there with you. I visited George Keats' grave in Louisville, Kentucky last year and had a hard time leaving (my family couldn't take me there more than half an hour). I drove a hundred miles out of the way on our trip and stayed overnight just to see Keats' grave.
People don't get it. I liked hearing your enthusiasm about Keats.

How I wish I had had an English teacher like Ennis! Teachers were either afraid of poetry or did a horrible job of teaching it. -- Or both! I didn't discover how great a thing poetry was until Keats showed me.

I talked my tolerant and sympathetic but completely puzzled family into driving clear across Ohio to Cincinnatti to see "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem," and continue across the river to Louisville in search of George's grave (but didn't find it ) -- And we did this with the quintessential recalcitrant teenager in the back seat of the "mom-mobile."

In a chemistry class, Broken Lyre, you could have pointed out how much Sir Humphrey Davey's "Elements of Chemical Philosophy" influenced Keats's poetry. -- Or not.

[Raphael]

I was heartily disappointed when Bright Star never made it to theaters here. But one day I paid a visit to the CD/video store and found it on DVD there. I didn't hesitate to purchase it.

I'm sorry to hear you didn't get to see it on the big screen. What did you think of the film?

As a music major I hope to one day compose a piece involving Keats somehow. (P.S. - It is raining now and the globed peonies in the yard are reminding me of "Ode on Melancholy").

I wish you great success with your music and Keatsian composition. I like your reference to the peonies, rain and the Ode.

[Pjerrot]

Raphael, thank you for wishing me well in my endeavors. My most ambitious goal is to one day complete an opera inspired by a literary work but small steps must be taken before that time comes.

I very much enjoyed the film and thought it well done. Mr. Whishaw and Ms. Cornish's performances were quite good and affecting. I was especially fond of the music score: it wasn't a clichéd maudlin sort with soaring violins and lush harmonies - it was intimate and scaled-down as it should be for the subject of Keats and Fanny's relationship.

I'm glad that you liked my reference to the rain and peonies as well as the Ode. Rainy days are my favorite.

[Ennis]

Raphael, BrokenLyre, and the rest:

I have a confession to make -- about last summer's visit to God's grave. Not only did I prostrate myself on the grass next to him (without, I might add, writing an Oscar Wilde-type elegy!), but I also, unbeknownst to the cemetery's keeper(s), (respectfully) dug down about a foot and a half into the ground in front of his headstone to try to get "old"dirt. I assumed that the deeper I dug, the older the dirt, and if I'm not ever going to be able to have actual contact with Keats, then I'll just have to settle for old dirt and breathing the air in that tiny, Roman room of death and touching the walls of the rooms in that white house in Hampstead and walking what paths are left on the Heath. Can we ever get any closer than that . . . ??!!
Obsession is a strict taskmaster.
Raphael -- at least you're from England . . .
(My apologies in advance if my "God's grave" phrase offends anyone. That certainly isn't my intention.)

[Raphael]

Raphael, BrokenLyre, and the rest:

I have a confession to make -- about last summer's visit to God's grave. Not only did I prostrate myself on the grass next to him (without, I might add, writing an Oscar Wilde-type elegy!), but I also, unbeknownst to the cemetery's keeper(s), (respectfully) dug down about a foot and a half into the ground in front of his headstone to try to get "old"dirt. I assumed that the deeper I dug, the older the dirt, and if I'm not ever going to be able to have actual contact with Keats, then I'll just have to settle for old dirt and breathing the air in that tiny, Roman room of death and touching the walls of the rooms in that white house in Hampstead and walking what paths are left on the Heath. Can we ever get any closer than that . . . ??!!
Obsession is a strict taskmaster.
Raphael -- at least you're from England . . .
(My apologies in advance if my "God's grave" phrase offends anyone. That certainly isn't my intention.)

Well Jane Campion wrote that she kissed his grave stone! I might be from England but STILL haven't been to Wentworth Place!
Did you keep the soil and take it home?
That reminds me of a young 19 year old student in the block of student halls I knew back in 2004- in his room, on a shelf, he had loads of jars with soil on them, with labels of where they had come from. Whenever he went on a trip somewhere he hadn't been before he collected the soil and put it in a jar, stuck a label on it and where it was from and the date. We were all intrigued at his unusual collection. If I remember rightly, he looked a bit like Ben Whishaw- dark haired and slender of build. He was paler than Ben though.He was a shy, quiet wistful sort of youth.

[Raphael]

Raphael, thank you for wishing me well in my endeavors. My most ambitious goal is to one day complete an opera inspired by a literary work but small steps must be taken before that time comes.

Oh do keep on with those small steps! One day you will get there- I hope you will write a Keatsian opera!

I very much enjoyed the film and thought it well done. Mr. Whishaw and Ms. Cornish's performances were quite good and affecting. I was especially fond of the music score: it wasn't a clichéd maudlin sort with soaring violins and lush harmonies - it was intimate and scaled-down as it should be for the subject of Keats and Fanny's relationship.

Oh the musical score is gorgeous- I particuarly love the bit used in Negative Capability on the CD. I too feel it has an intimiate air and I feel it has something of John's spirit in it- I cannot explain it exactly- but it evokes him somehow.

I'm glad that you liked my reference to the rain and peonies as well as the Ode. Rainy days are my favorite.

You would like England then!
One thing I really love is sitting under the duvet in bed reading, with candlelight, Chopin on and the rain pattering on the windows.

[Pjerrot]

One thing I really love is sitting under the duvet in bed reading, with candlelight, Chopin on and the rain pattering on the windows.

That sounds lovely. One thing I dreamed of when I was very young was of a window seat in a former home of my family. Upon inquiry, I found that no such seat existed! I was certain that it did - it seems my imagination was constructing fully-detailed worlds before I had even entered school years.

[Ennis]

Raphael, et al -

Of course I took it home! -- along with some most interesting terra cotta pottery shards and several "fossilized" snaily(?)-looking things. It's all in a jar in a decorated shadow box on my shrine wall. I also have some bark from the mulberry tree in the front yard of the Keats House, as well as some dirt from underneath the tree. Of course, our famous plum tree is no longer there, but at least the mulberry tree is original to the house -- which means the Dear One may actually have touched that tree at some point during his brief stay at Brown's home. And believed me, I touched as much of that tree as possible. I'm sure anyone who happened to have seen me do all this must have thought I had lost my mind (again, maybe I have; maybe I don't care!!). The bark and the dirt from the house is also contained in (an archival quality) shadowbox. Last summer when I was walking around the gardens of the house (it hadn't repoened yet from the renovations work, so I couldn't GO INSIDE!!), I sat on a bench in the front yard, not far from that mulberry tree, and looking down to read from my volume of Keats's poetry, I spied several china shards stacked neatly on the grass next to a leg of the bench. They appeared to be very old and of some type of a blue willow-ware design. I wondered then, and still wonder today, if maybe they were unearthed during the landscape renovations and inadvertently left there. I attempted to ask some one of some authority, perhaps a curator overseeing the interior renovation, but the only ones working were two workmen who were clueless about everything I asked. Needless to say, I added those shards to my collection, as well. My next "art" project is to incorporate those china fragments and flowers from the Heath I have sinced pressed, along with some other appropriate trinkets, into a shadowbox in Fanny's honour. All added to the shrine wall, of course! I'm actually surpised I made it through Roman and American customs with all that dirt and plant material. I guess I just hid it all very well!!
Again, obsession is a strict taskmaster. . . !

[BrokenLyre]

Ennis - you are too much! Soil from the Grave, bark from the Tree..... Awesome. I understand all too well. I have never been to those places but I "get it."

Talking of soil and obsessions and confessions... I too have a confession to make....

I have collected Oceanic Beach sand from 66 countries of the world for a total of 202 samples. Yes,they are all in bottles, scientifically cataloged, and displayed with a world map and pins on each location. ....19 years of collecting and counting...

Ok - since this a Bright Star thread....let me say that I am looking forward to seeing the movie with some friends who know little to nothing of Keats. Should be fun.

[Ennis]

Brokenlyre --

You've been to 66 countries?!?! Is that how you accumulated your sand, all 202 samples?? If so, what a feat! You MUST (and I'm not shouting . . . I was "fussed" at on another forum for not knowing proper posting etiquette!) be a scientist, but then you did teach 8th grade science. Right? Do you still??

And since this is a "Bright Star" thread, I'll throw in my two-cents worth: saw it 11 times (I had been waiting almost my entire life for a Keats's movie) and I LOVED it (and I am shouting now!!). I loved everything about it. I was, and still am, very pleased with Cornish's portrayal of Fanny and Whishaw was excellent as Keats. The script, the art direction, the costuming, the cinematography, the music -- my God(dess), the music was absolutely beautiful! -- everything about that film was exquisite!

[Raphael]

One thing I really love is sitting under the duvet in bed reading, with candlelight, Chopin on and the rain pattering on the windows.

That sounds lovely. One thing I dreamed of when I was very young was of a window seat in a former home of my family. Upon inquiry, I found that no such seat existed! I was certain that it did - it seems my imagination was constructing fully-detailed worlds before I had even entered school years.

Perhaps a previous life lol