Poetry in Motion
“They make it pretty, they make it comical, or they make it lust, but they cannot make it true…”
Shakespeare, Beckett, Ibsen — these proverbial poets inspire new theatrical incarnations and interpretations year after year on Broadway and in the West End. If poetry thrives on stage, why do we seldom see it on screen? And when we do, why is it usually such a rocky transition? Film simply resists language with screenwriters constantly encouraged to slice and dice dialogue and mince monologues in favor of larger-than-life action sequences and superimposed montages to distract from the scope of soliloquies. Take Kenneth Branagh’s hopelessly over-the-top Hamlet (1996) or Baz Luhrmann's spastic, acid-laced reimagining of Romeo and Juliet (1996), both of which strip the bard's text of all apparent subtlety.
Often in films, poetry is lovingly alluded to like Whitman's 'O Captain! My Captain!' in The Dead Poet’s Society (1989) and Pope's 'Eloisa to Abelard' in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Or it can fit within the greater context of a poet’s life like in Sylvia (2003) and Shakespeare in Love (1998). Yet these film's fates typically remain the same. They either soar on the strength of the poet's words and filmmaker's instincts or crash and burn if the director doesn't sidestep the saccharine pitfalls. There’s hardly any middle ground.
I saw this firsthand after viewing John Maybury’s Edge of Love (2008) centered on the turbulent life of poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys) and Jane Campion’s Bright Star starring Ben Whishaw as Keats, an artist receptive to the senses with every fiber of his being, and Abbie Cornish as his headstrong love, Fanny Brawne. Now why did the poetry feel so cumbersome and heavy-handed in Edge of Love but so seamlessly woven into the celluloid fabric of Bright Star?
Can the beauty of poetry truly be captured on film? Surely, the angst can. Poets’ tumultuous lives naturally lend themselves to drama. Think Thomas (alcoholic), Keats (consumptive), and Plath (downright suicidal). It is simple to show the catalysts - the drinking, the coughing, the depression - compared to incorporating the elusive poetry itself. Poets often live in their own head space which can make for increasingly tricky adaptations from page to screen. How are filmmakers to visually conceptualize flights of fancy? How are they to bottle the imagination and release this ephemeral magic on the world?
As Dame Judi Dench professes as Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love, “They make it pretty, they make it comical, or they make it lust, but they cannot make it true.” While she was talking of capturing poetic love specifically on stage, I think that, had film existed at the time, she would have dismissed the transmittance of true love across the board. Surely, she would have been right if only biopics like Edge of Love existed. Thomas spends Love torn between his volatile wife, Caitlin (Sienna Miller), and his alluring childhood sweetheart, Vera (Kiera Knightley). But his disarming poetics soon fade into the background as Maybury stoops to make Sapphic insinuations regarding Caitlin and Vera’s friendship.
While Maybury neglects poetry in favor of more obvious scopophiliac pleasures in Love, Campion reaches for the firmament in Bright Star and if she does not reach the heavens, she comes miraculously close. Mixed with lush visuals, the poet’s epistolary verse blooms in Fanny’s consciousness even though it was long before it would take root with the rest of the world. The film throbs in time to the two lovers’ heartbeats, punctuated by every poetic beat and emboldened, not diminished, with Keats' distance from Fanny. Joining the ranks of Romeo and Juliet and Pyramus and Thisbe (the first of many to be foiled by that exasperating wall), Keats and Fanny bask in the dizzying effects of first love. Every trembling of butterflies’ wings and rustle of the wind signifies how in tune they are with each other as well as the natural order around them. Campion never condescends to the first time lover’s overwhelming sense of wonder but builds a fitting tribute with each tentative touch, furtive glance, and precious moment stolen away together. First love is amplified, not belittled.
While some writers like Indiewire’s Eric Kohn seem to think that Bright Star is in need of a sex scene, not only would it be historically inaccurate, it would also feel emotionally false and cheapened. Although Fanny does offer herself to Keats, he senses, perhaps from the start, that he’s not long for this world and realizes that their love transcends their worldly trappings. What they cannot consummate physically, they consummate through poetry. As Keats explains to Fanny, “The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it's to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water.”
Though Keats used this to explain poetry, Campion also applies this lesson to love. Fanny sidesteps status and fortune, clear end-goals for women her age, for love. Is it a fool’s errand or a masochistic streak to risk one’s heart on a penniless poet? Why love a dying man? Perhaps the act of loving is worth the inevitable heartache in the end. While poetry seems foreign and intangible to Fanny in the beginning, her final recitation of ‘Bright Star’ as she trudges across the moor mourning lost love marks her loyalty to Keats and his craft. By doing so, she fulfills the prophesy that “a thing of beauty is a joy forever. It’s loveliness increases. It will never pass into nothingness.”
Can film really capture poetry? And can poetry get to the very truth and nature of love? With Bright Star, that’s one bet worth wagering. Yet see the film not to judge what comes to fruition. Revel in the sensation of surrounding yourself with it.
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