Great Movies

I just watched two great movies back-to-back, mostly because I was home by myself this past weekend. The first, Young Victoria, is on DVD and available from our library system. The actors, Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend, play Queen Victoria and her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha so well. It is a beautiful film in exquisite accuracy to detail. One of the producers is Sarah Ferguson, and she is on the DVD featurettes explaining more about the Queen. After the film I reached up to find my copy of Queen Victoria: a Personal History by Christopher Hibbert, a gift from my brother, with more interest. I would like to dedicate a month of serious study of this fascinating woman.
The other great film is Bright Star with the actors Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw. This is the story of John Keats, one of the famous English Romantic poets, and his muse, Fanny Brawne. He meets her when he is only 23 and she is 18. They fall in love, but he is penniless and unable to marry. The scene beings in 1818, when  Fanny and her family make the acquaintance of John Keats. She is frivolous, interested in dancing and fashion; he is the serious philosopher, tending to his dying brother. He lends her books, and tries to teach her about poetry, as she confesses she is unequipped to evaluate. He begins to write love poems and letters to her. Through the two years they are to know each other, his grief over his brother's death is assuaged by her attention and devotion. Like many Jane Austen film's, the story is between the few people they know, in a small English town, and their real depths of discussion take place in the English country side, or by the fire in each other's homes. I would recommend this for aficionados of the Jane Austen films. This is one of the best of this genre. These letters were unknown until after Fanny Brawne's death at the age of 65. The director of this rich film was Jane Campion, and I was astonished by the beauty and the acting. Released in 2009, the DVD came out in 2010. I believe it was Andrew Motion's biography of Keats, 1987, that Jane Campion alluded to in the featurette at the end of the film.