Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009)
Unlike a bollywood song that metaphorically transports a couple from the streets of Chandni Chowk to the Saharan desert, Campion’s lovers are affixed to reality: four walls, the bed, the sheets and a trail of dead butterflies. The windows are shut and there is no escape. Fanny Brawne clutches a letter like it was a dagger and there’s nary a song nor rain to drown out that wail. Everyone but Brawne is a mere extra on set: her mother, her sisters concerned, but look on with kindness. And it is that very kindness that Campion implores of her viewers. Perhaps it is impossible to bottle the abundance of romantic poetry within a linear narrative. But it might just be possible to encourage that bit of compassion when in witness of a feeling so deep that the only way to express it is to push against the confines of language and bring to mind the relationship a blade of grass shares with the moon. For Campion, love is unqualified; it is neither virgin nor wise; it is total.