Flickering Myth: Profile of writer-director Jane Campion (Part Two)

Last week, we featured the first part of a profile by Trevor Hogg on screenwriter-director Jane Campion, hosted at the wonderful cinema U.K.-based website Flickering Myth. The second part of the profile posted today - well worth the read. Here are some highlights re Campion's latest movie Bright Star:

To create her latest film Bright Star (2009), Jane Campion had to overcome a natural dislike for a particular style of writing. “I had a mental problem, an aversion to poetry. It goes back decades.” The major source material for the director was a book authored by Andrew Motion about English poet John Keats. “[In] the last three years of his [Keats] life, he’d fallen in love with his neighbour, Fanny Brawne. I had no idea how intense this love story was, or about the letters that documented it. Those thirty-three letters take you right to the heart of this great love affair. I was moved deeply by the tragedy of it all.”

When asked about her attraction to shooting period pictures, Jane Campion responded, “You do a contemporary film and you think you’ve already done your research. But in a way, that life we live in contemporary time is unexamined. So research you do into, say, the 1820s makes you pay attention to everything that surrounds your characters. Some things don’t exist anymore, some you have to build. Every piece of paper, every article of clothing, is different.” Despite the time gap, the director believes artists like John Keats had contemporary sensibilities. “The Romantics were called “romantics” because they were rebels against the status quo in a pretty important way. At that time, life and love itself were so unfair, so removed from what we know today. Every advantage went to the upper classes. Society was very staid. You couldn’t marry for love. Money meant everything. Many people left England because they felt they didn’t have a chance there.” Campion explained further, “These poets were speaking out and acting out against that. They were saying, ‘There’s one set of laws, society’s laws, and then there’s my gut, my instinct.’ And these poets said, ‘There’s more important things to worry about than etiquette, class, rituals.’ That’s why they seem [to be] so modern. That’s why we respond to them today.”

There was another reason Jane Campion was drawn to the short-lived romance. “What I loved so much about this story is its purity and innocence. It’s such a rare thing these days. Also, the poetry, a lost art which, hopefully, we’ve given a moment. It felt like it was about things I want to know about life. It’s not fashionable, but it seemed to feed me in the way I wanted to be fed.” The director is not concerned about the absence of a certain element in the relationship between the poet and his muse. “The chaste aspect of Fanny’s romance with Keats is not a big deal. It brings a fresh and original quality. You know, sex is actually not so original as the way people love or the stories behind each relationship, which is what you remember. Sex is sex in the end.”

Starring Ben Whishaw (My Brother Tom) and Abbie Cornish (Somersault) as the doomed lovers, Bright Star is a major contender for Best Picture at the next Academy Awards. When the picture was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, it found an unlikely admirer, someone known for creating movies filled with poetic violence and monologues. “I’m not really into poetry,” responded Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction). “But the movie made me think about taking a poetry class. One of the best things that can happen from a movie about an author is that you actually want to read their work.”

If a movie can get Tarantino interested in taking a poetry class, that's a movie worth seeing!

Then there's this interesting comment by Campion:

Declared by The New York Times to be “one of modern cinema’s great explorers of female sexuality,” Jane Campion stated, “I think most women are love addicts. We’re brought up in this culture to be such, and we believe we’re going to get fulfilled through being seen intimately by a man. But it’s just not true.” Campion is disappointed by the number of female directors receiving international recognition and support. “I would love to see more women directors because they represent half of the population and give birth to the whole world. Without them the rest of the world is not getting to know the whole story.”

"Give birth to the whole world." Never heard that obvious truth put in such a way.

Here is the trailer to Bright Star which is currently in select theaters: