Adonais - Bright Star/Stones In The Park

Recently viewed Jane Campion's film Bright Star, a quiet, chaste examination of the later life of John Keats, his relationship with Fanny Brawne and the process of composing poetry.

If you're rich, it's OK. You can lie around all day on sofas waiting for inspiration, or try to spark off your companion. If you're well off, you can marry too. Unfortunately for Keats he wasn't to enjoy success whilst alive. Campion's film takes advantage of some lovely English locations, and some artistic licence when dealing with events in the poet's life ; a remark about butterflies in one of Keats' letters to Fanny has Ms. Brawne encouraging her siblings to collect the insects and transform her bedroom into a butterfly farm. Googling Keats after the film, I was surprised to note that Percy Shelley, although not close to his fellow poet, was moved to pen Adonais after news of Keats' death in Rome reached him. I was equally intrigued by the fact that Mick Jagger read two stanzas of Adonais before the Rolling Stones 1969 free concert in Hyde Park, which had been transformed from an introduction to Mick Taylor to a memorial for Brian Jones, found drowned at the bottom of his swimming pool two days previously.

Hundreds of butterflies were released after Mick's elegy for the Godstar. Bright Star is an interesting film. The Stones In The Park is an amazing piece of work, considering that it was an hour long film for television. Whoever directed and edited it got it right. A fascinating look at a small part of England in 1969.