Last night to end a wonderful birthday, Ahmad took me to Freuds in Jericho for a cocktail and something to eat, then to the Pheonix to watch Jane Campion's, beautiful, gentle, sad new movie, Bright Star...........I'm still walking on air.
John Keats wrote the poem Bright Star for the love of his life, Fanny Brawne. The film tells their short story in a way that felt current, it isn't oversentimentalised.....and has amazing cinematorgraphy, including one of my favourite shots, showing row after row of white washing blowing in the wind, on the edge of Hampstead Heath, and another where Fanny makes a butterfly garden in her bedroom.
The whole evening had a kind of juxtaposition of 19c interlaced with the 21st, as Frueds is located in an early 19c Greek Revival Church, with a stone portico supported by crumbling columns, and a voluminous shabby sheek interior, illuminated with candlelight. The film seemed to have the same mix.
Bright Star
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human
snow upon the mountains and the moors
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
John Keates
......on my way to get a copy of Keats poems.....I'm hooked now......
John Keats wrote the poem Bright Star for the love of his life, Fanny Brawne. The film tells their short story in a way that felt current, it isn't oversentimentalised.....and has amazing cinematorgraphy, including one of my favourite shots, showing row after row of white washing blowing in the wind, on the edge of Hampstead Heath, and another where Fanny makes a butterfly garden in her bedroom.
The whole evening had a kind of juxtaposition of 19c interlaced with the 21st, as Frueds is located in an early 19c Greek Revival Church, with a stone portico supported by crumbling columns, and a voluminous shabby sheek interior, illuminated with candlelight. The film seemed to have the same mix.
Bright Star
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human
snow upon the mountains and the moors
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
John Keates
......on my way to get a copy of Keats poems.....I'm hooked now......
Sounds like a great way to end a birthday. I haven't seen the film, but would like to. I've heard good things about it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment on my blog. You know, when you mentioned your mother buying the paper doll books for you when you were sick, I think it may have been the same for me, initially anyway. I think they were quite cheap and she went into the newsagent for a magazine and I often was drawn to the paper doll books. I rarely see them these days.