Jane Campion and her two stars, Ben Whishaw as the poet Keats and Abbie Cornish as his great love Fanny Brawne, manage the remarkable feat of making this sad, tortured yet enduring love story both credible and moving. I feared the costume-drama prettiness and attitudinizing that often mars historical biographies of the British type, but Whishaw and Cornish are compelling as the young lovers fate frowns upon. It helps that both actors are fresh faces. Whishaw nicely embodies Keats’s diffidence and dedication as well as his quiet genius. Cornish, with her severe hairdo and extreme self-possession, is a little jarrring at first, but soon wins us over with her capacity for devotion. There’s nothing of the giddy girl about her.
This is a tough story to make interesting – a poet dies young of TB while everybody looks on, able to do nothing – and it lags some in the second half, but Campion makes up in authenticity what she lacks in dramatic action. Warning: Much poetry gets recited on screen, so this film is recommended for those who appreciate Keats and the English Romantic poets.
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