4 - open letter to jane campion

I wish to be moved. I cannot feel in life. I must have others do it for me here in the theatre…. The theatre is my drug, and my illness is so far advanced that my physic must be of the highest quality.

            —John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, The Libertine

~~~

Dear Jane:

I expect you have so many who write and tell you of your impact, how your art has made a difference in their lives. Just a short note here.

I'd like to join your cadre of admirers and let you know your Bright Star brought me back to life. I can’t say it or write it enough. At a time when I was coming apart, diagnosed with cancer and struggling with the ensuing therapies and the “spectre” of death, challenged by the end of an 18-year relationship and a belief that love had died, you gave me Keats and Fanny.

I’ve seen the film more than once. I have purchased the DVD to add to my library. I've read and reread Rodríguez’s Book of the Heart…, I’ve read the “Odes…,” the Penguin Bright Star collection you introduced, Motion’s tome Keats, and am now finishing with Cox’s Norton Critical Editions Keats's Poetry and Prose. I have indeed tracked back toward mystery and the "spiritus" of art, and the depth of feeling I've always found there.

Ms. Campion, consider this a hug that extends to you and your splendid group of actors and filmmaking collaborators. The story you distilled from the Motion biography and Keats’s poetry and prose goes deep, touches us in a timeless way connecting us to universal human experience across cultures and epochs.

The simple and compelling moment in a life when we are “entrammeled” by another in love, attracted and drawn to that one person, and then add to this the unsettling and insufferable nearness of death and the profound and complex thoughts and feelings that result, well,… that you were able to fashion such a masterpiece of film literature speaks to the depth of your empathy and understanding, your unparalleled artistry—your own love.

No words can capture what your Bright Star has wrought. Again, all I can say, out of a grand humility and appreciation, is thanks, thanks to everyone who had a hand in bringing John Keats and Fanny Brawne back to life.

You saved me from ruin.