A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving into 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 a experience beyond thought.
Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery.
-John Keats
Brought to us on the wings of a dove by Jane Campion, this understated story is as much about the story telling as it is about the story itself. Simply put, it is a period piece about the poet John Keats (Ben Wishaw) and his love of Frances Cornish (Abbie Cornish) before his early death in his mid-twenties. If you can slow down to the mellow pace of the film, it surrounds your senses. Lush and rich, the greens are full and deep and have a feel to them. The wind blowing through the windows, making the curtains dance seem to leak out of the screen and through your hair. The bountiful fields of flowers and their velvet petals pale only to the fragile butterflies colored just as vibrant. It is a set, a scene where these two strangers fall deeply and madly in love with one another. Paul Schneider does an excellent job as Frances' rival for Keats attention as Charles Armitage Brown. The snippy dialogue between the two make for humor in a story where all else is so proper and prim. For the time, the love affair was made exciting and passionate. I did not find Wishaw to be a particularly handsome man and was surprised by the casting, but his acting and stance muted my objections. Even knowing the ending, I felt tears come watching Frances suffer from her grief from losing him to both his travels and his death. It was superb.Big bite: A passionate tale told in a a fairy tale world of poetry itself.
