Line #58 Film/BrightStar


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bright_star_poster__5772.jpg]]
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3	''Bright Star'' is a {{Biopic}} based on the last three years of the life of Creator/JohnKeats, the great Romantic Era poet who died of tuberculosis at the ripe old age of twenty-five. In particular, it views Keats through the lens of his [[TheMuse muse]] and LoveInterest, Fanny Brawne. Creator/AbbieCornish stars as Brawne, and Creator/BenWhishaw co-stars as Keats.
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5	Written and directed by Creator/JaneCampion, who had previously directed ''Film/ThePiano''.
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7	The film's title is a [[ShoutOut reference]] to Keats' sonnet "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_star,_would_I_were_steadfast_as_thou_art Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art"]], which he dedicated to Brawne.
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9	----
10	!! This movie provides examples of the following tropes:
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12	* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Creator/JohnKeats stood five feet tall in his boots, but that wouldn't work well for the male lead in a romantic movie. For that matter, contemporary accounts describe Brawne more as charming than as classically beautiful.
13	* AlphaBitch: Brown worries that Brawne is an AlphaBitch. Initially, Keats shares his concern. Turns out instead she's not malicious.
14	%%* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Both in-universe and out.
15	%%* AnguishedDeclarationOfLove: A veritable slew o' them.
16	* AntiVillain: Brown. While he comes between the main couple, his genuinely good intentions and very sympathetic nature and love for his friends endears him to the audience.
17	%%* BelligerentSexualTension: Plenty to go around.
18	* BloodFromTheMouth: Fanny finds out that Keats is ill when she finds blood-stained linen (he's not seen coughing blood at that point, but the implications are pretty clear).
19	* BoyMeetsGirl: Although if you know anything about Keats, [[ForegoneConclusion you know]] how [[DownerEnding it ends]].
20	* BrainlessBeauty: Brown accuses Brawne of being one. He's wrong, but she's definitely uneducated in comparison to him and Keats. Also, let's face it, she'd have to be quite a TeenGenius herself to have any chance of not seeming brainless in comparison with Creator/JohnKeats.
21	* BrattyHalfPint: Brawne often views her kid sister Toots this way.
22	* BrilliantButLazy: Brown seems to view Keats this way. Yet Keats managed to churn out poems -- brilliant poems -- at a rate few other poets in history could match. Before he turned twenty-five, he was already too sick to write, but between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four he had managed to produce literally hundreds of important poems, some of them seminal works of the Romantic Era. Lazy? I think not.
23	* CostumePorn: Personified in one Fanny Brawne, the Coco Chanel of early-nineteenth-century Hampstead. (The film was nominated for an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward for Best Costume Design.)
24	* DeadpanSnarker: Brown most of all. But also Brawne and even Keats himself when he's not being all quiet and sullen.
25	* DeathIsDramatic: [[AvertedTrope Averted]], which is unusual for BioPic. We only find out Keats has died when Fanny gets the news from Brown, and even then we only get a few brief shots of his coffin.
26	* DemotedToExtra: As a result of the film being from Fanny's perspective rather than Keats', Leigh Hunt, Joseph Severn, and everyone else in Keats' life except the Brawne family and Mr. Brown. For that matter, Keats' rivals for Brawne's affection barely even register in the movie.
27	* DisappearedDad: Keats' parents have died. Brawne's father has, too.
28	* DownerEnding: Keats goes to Italy, hoping that the warmer climate will improve his condition and he can marry Fanny when he returns. Instead, he dies there and Fanny is left devastated.
29	* EmbarrassingNickname: Frances "Fanny" Brawne. Although Keats has a kid sister and a (dead) mother with the same name, so he's in no position to mock her. Also Margaret "Toots" Brawne, Fanny's kid sister.
30	* ForegoneConclusion: At least to anyone who has read anything about Keats' life.
31	* {{Foreshadowing}}: Not surprising, since Keats' poetry and letters are themselves full of allusions to early death.
32	* ForgottenFallenFriend: Tom Keats, John's brother, who dies of tuberculosis. His death is useful to show that Brawne is beginning to really care about Keats -- she stays up all night to sew a beautiful pillowcase for his coffin -- but once he's served his plot point he's more or less forgotten by the movie and everyone in it.
33	* GirlNextDoor: Possibly. Brawne literally lives next door to Keats, but how well she fits the trope is [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation open to debate]].
34	* HerHeartWillGoOn: Not within the movie, which presents Fanny as deeply and inexorably in love with Keats. The RealLife Fanny Brawne married someone else, had children, and lived on another four decades after Keats' death-- but only after she had been in mourning for him for twelve years.
35	* HiddenDepths: Keats is surprised to find that Brawne is not the BrainlessBeauty she has been made out to be.
36	%%* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Brown.
37	%%* HypocriticalHumor: [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade Brown, you dog, you quick fox.]]
38	* IJustWantToBeSpecial: Brown desperately wants to be a great poet but he is painfully aware that he is nowhere near as talented as Keats and, as such, tries to live vicariously through his works.
39	* IncurableCoughOfDeath: Toned ''way'' down to make the movie palatable (read: romantic) to mainstream audiences.
40	* IndirectKiss: In a letter to Fanny, Keats writes: "write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been."
41	* InstantIllness: Justified, as Keats was already ill at the time.
42	* InsufferableGenius: Brown. (Not much of a genius compared with Creator/JohnKeats, but then, who among us is?)
43	* InterruptedSuicide: A non-serious example, played mostly for laughs.
44	** By contrast, Keats' own quite serious suicide attempts are skipped completely. They weren't very funny.
45	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Brown really does care for Keats and looks up to him (so to speak) a great deal, despite his brash demeanor and seeming desire to work the man to death.
46	%%* LoveLetterLunacy: Sorta. Arguably PlayingWithATrope.
47	* LoveMartyr: Brawne -- though it's less Keats himself that's the problem and more his circumstance.
48	** Brown's [[{{Meido}} scullery maid]] is arguably more characteristic of the trope, although she's too minor a character for us to know for sure. (This is true of the RealLife woman, as well-- we don't know what became of her.)
49	* LoveTriangle: Brawne and Brown nearly come to blows over Keats. Repeatedly.
50	* ManChild: Keats, Brown, and Brawne. Brawne has the excuse that she's barely an adult at all when we first meet her.
51	** And Keats is twenty-two. Brown, however, is in his thirties and has no good excuse for his petulance.
52	* MeetCute: The spilled coffee scene.
53	* {{Meido}}: Brown becomes romantically entangled with his scullery maid. A scathing bit of HypocriticalHumor considering all he's said about Brawne up to that point.
54	* {{Melodrama}}: When it's not trying to be a RomanticComedy, Bright Star is well-done but unapologetic {{melodrama}}.
55	* MissingMom: Keats' parents have died.
56	* TheMole: A DiscussedTrope. Keats initially views Fanny as at least potentially this.
57	* TheMuse: Brawne. Although at first she insists she'd rather amuse and be amused than muse, bemuse, or be a muse.
58	** Although the movie generally skips over this, it's also worth noting that Keats had a few muses before Brawne, including a pretty and brilliant young woman named Isabella Jones, with whom Keats shared a "flirtation" that overlapped somewhat with the time he knew Brawne. She has not merely been DemotedToExtra but completely expunged from the movie's account, and in fact scholars don't really know what became of her. (Did Keats dump her for Brawne? Did she dump him to marry someone else with better financial prospects?) For that matter, Keats was perfectly capable of producing a brilliant poem without the involvement of any romantic [[TheMuse muse]], and only a minority of poems are truly love poems.
59	* NeverLearnedToRead: Brown's [[{{Meido}} scullery maid]]. A JustifiedTrope given the time and place. Becomes a plot point (and a bit of HypocriticalHumor) when Brown offers to teach her how to read.
60	* ObliviousToLove: [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation Arguably,]] Keats toward Brown.
61	* OneSteveLimit: An AvertedTrope, in the case of Brown and Brawne. At least if you leave aside that they're surnames, not given names.
62	%%* OscarBait: Blatant. And indeed it did secure a nomination -- for [[CostumePorn Best Costume Design]].
63	* PimpedOutDress: In Brawne's dresses, even the flounces have their own flounces.
64	%%* PungeonMaster: Brown, Keats, and Brawne. But Brown head and shoulders above the other two.
65	%%* TheQuietOne: Keats, especially when he's brooding.
66	%%* RelationshipUpgrade: Several.
67	* RomanticComedy: Displays quite a few characteristics of this, despite the ForegoneConclusion DownerEnding.
68	* RuleOfDrama: It's a BioPic, not a documentary, so the lives of Keats, Brown, and Brawne are streamlined from the messiness of real life into a borderline-{{melodrama}}tic romance. Anything that doesn't further the plot is pushed to the side or completely cut. Conversely, things that never happened are added, for the same reasons.
69	%%* SceneryPorn
70	* SelectiveObliviousness: Keats, toward Brown. In [[ObliviousToLove more]] ways than [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade one]].
71	* SeparatedByTheWall: In separate but adjoining bedrooms, Keats and Brawne each lie abed and place a hand on the wall, to make it seem as if somehow, by magic, their hands are touching. Neither of them has any way of knowing that the other is doing this at all, yet their hands still align perfectly.
72	%%* ShrinkingViolet: Keats, who occasionally borders on TheQuietOne.
73	%%* StarCrossedLovers
74	* TeenGenius: Not literally a teenager, but Keats is only twenty-two at the start of the film.
75	* ThemeNaming: The Brawne sisters: Fanny and Toots. To some extent, an example of HavingAGayOldTime, as they were common nicknames in that era. Be that as it may, if Shakespeare had had sisters named Fanny and Toots alongside Mistress Quickly, you can bet that the local countryside would have teemed with such CountryMatters.
76	* TragicDream: Brown dreams of being a great poet, like his friend Keats. Keats dreams not only of being great poet -- not realizing her already ''is'' one -- but also a critically and financially successful one. (Financial and especially critical success would come in time; alas, not before his death.) In addition, Keats dreams of marrying Brawne, but he has no money and few prospects.
77	* TVGenius: A rare BioPic about a towering genius that somehow manages to [[AvertedTrope avert]] this trope. It may help that we view him chiefly through Brawne's eyes, and she admits she doesn't know much about poetry. It almost definitely helps, in [[AvertedTrope averting]] the more {{JustForFun/egregious}} TVGenius tropes, that Keats is portrayed as a [[AbsentMindedProfessor forgetful]], distracted ShrinkingViolet / TheQuietOne -- whether or not that's a realistic assessment -- rather than a [[PungeonMaster plentiful fount of wit]] like his friend Brown.

Context Film / BrightStar