BEFORE: Jumping back to 1818 for a movie about poet John Keats - who, I admit I know very little about. But that's what Britfest 2019 is all about, right? I'm hear to learn about British subjects, and he was one of them.
Abbie Cornish carries over from "W.E." Happy belated birthday, Abbie! (August 7 - sorry, I should have made this connection yesterday...)
THE PLOT: The three-year romance between 19th century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne near the end of his life.
AFTER: Now I'm wishing that I included this one (and "W.E" as well) in my February chain, because there's not much to this film outside of the romance. Keats died at an early age (oops, spoiler alert) but back then, a lot of people did. There was no cure for tuberculosis (aka consumption) back then, apparently, and that's often reflected in movies - once a character starts coughing up blood, it's really just a matter of time. Jesus, I had TB myself about 10 years ago, and it meant taking antibiotics for 6 months, during which time I couldn't drink any alcohol. That was a rough six months, no beer dinners, no beer festivals, no beer on a Friday night after a tough week - I almost felt like the disease wasn't as bad as the cure. But I got through it - John Keats and many others just had the bad fortune to live in the early 19th century.
It probably also didn't help that he lived in an age where if someone was feeling rundown, ill-tempered or troubled by consumption, a common treatment was bleeding them, which, surprise - only made them weaker and less able to fight off disease in the long run. Whoopsie. The bacillus that causes TB wasn't discovered until 1882, and when the pasteurization process was invented, that decreased the chances of people getting it from infected milk. A vaccine was first used in 1921, but then really caught on after World War II. See? We're all learning something tonight. But in Keats' day, consumption/TB caused one in every four deaths.
Outside of watching Keats fall sick, this film is about the romance between him and Fanny Brawne. OK, stop giggling, "Fanny" was a common enough name back then, in fact Keats' mother and sister went by that name (short for Frances, most commonly). But is it really a romance, by today's standards? They're shown in this film holding hands, and then kissing, but it almost feels like that's as far as it went. Geez, I thought that Brits were uptight during the Victorian era, but this film is set during the reign of either George III or George IV - I guess people got more prudish as you look back in time, whatever "The Favourite" and "Mary Queen of Scots" would have you believe about the acceptance of gay people in British society. I'm not sure that Keats and Miss Brawne ever "did it", because they spent so much time circling each other, then he'd go away, come back, go away again, and then he got sick. Carpe diem, young lovers.
My other takeaway is that poets were like the hipsters of their day - and not just because they dressed sort of alike. Writing poems didn't provide much income, and this was a big stumbling block in the relationship. If your daughter came home and said she wanted to marry a guy in a band - I mean a terrible indie rock band, not like Coldplay or Maroon 5 - you'd probably want to forbid it, because the guy technically has no source of income. (It would be the wrong move, because you'd drive a wedge between yourself and your daughter, plus you never know, his band could be the NEXT Coldplay or Maroon 5.)
Keats was afraid to ask for Fanny's hand in marriage, because he couldn't afford it? Huh? Who can't afford to get married? You just go to the county clerk, fill out a form, wait a few days, have a civil ceremony, and you're married. Not everybody has to have the big, blow-out wedding with 500 guests and 17 bridesmaids inside of St. Patrick's Cathedral. (Sorry, St. Paul's...). Oh, I guess they mean he had no income to support a wife, and back in these days even if she had income from her sewing work, and he didn't, that would be emasculating and embarassing. Still, I'm not seeing why these crazy kids couldn't pull the trigger on the marriage thing. Jeezus, it's been three years, neither one was seeing anyone else, who cares what society thinks, just do it already.
And if money was a concern, why not, you know, get a job? He could still write poetry in his spare time - reading up on Keats' Wiki page, it seems he had an apprenticeship with a surgeon, and people assumed he'd pursue a career in medicine. Sure, medicine's loss is poetry's gain, but who said it had to be either/or? Why not work in the medical field, get some money put aside, and then write some poetry to relax? I don't see why he had to concentrate so hard on poetry, and in fact it seems like there was a lot of laying around, waiting for inspiration. But what do I know? I guess he found that inspiration, even if his poems weren't appreciated until after he died.
There's a lot of hard luck in the John Keats story, most of which isn't even mentioned in this film - from his father dying from a skull fracture after falling off a horse when John was only 8, to his mother remarrying but then leaving her new husband, forcing John and his siblings to go live with their grandmother after his mother died (also from TB). There was some money set aside in a trust for him to receive when he turned 21, only he never applied for it, so maybe nobody ever told him about it? That money sure could have come in handy to a struggling poet - that's when he went to study at a medical hospital, and he even got an apothecary (pharmacist) license, only right after that he decided to devote himself to poetry. Shortly after that, he moved with his sick brother Tom (yep, tuberculosis) to Hampstead, and that's where this film picks up his story.
People back then didn't even know that TB was contagious, so it's very possible that he caught it from his brother as he was caring for him. Now I'm super glad I didn't live in the 1800's, but I wonder if people 200 years from now will look back on us and think about how stupid we were, because we didn't know how to prevent cancer, and most of us ate like we didn't know how to prevent heart disease.
Also starring Ben Whishaw (last heard in "Paddington 2"), Paul Schneider (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Kerry Fox, Thomas Brodie-Sangster (last seen in "Tristan + Isolde"), Edie Martin, Antonia Campbell-Hughes (last seen in "Albert Nobbs"), Claudie Blakley (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice"), Gerard Monaco (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Olly Alexander (last seen in "27: Gone Too Soon"), Samuel Roukin, Amanda Hale (last seen in "The Invisible Woman"), Lucinda Raikes (last seen in "The Fifth Estate") Jonathan Aris (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Roger Ashton-Griffiths (ditto), Samuel Barnett (last seen in "Mrs. Henderson Presents"), Vincent Franklin, Eileen Davies, Sebastian Armesto, Adrian Schiller.
RATING: 5 out of 10 walks along the Heath
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