Bright Star

I rented this movie over Valentine's weekend because it chronicles the love story of the Romantic poet John Keats and a woman named Fanny Brawne, and what's more romantic than a Romantic poet's love for a woman who becomes his muse? Never mind the fact that they never get married because he's too poor and then dies from tuberculosis (and that's not a spoiler because his death at age twenty-six was the only thing I knew about him.) So if you don't mind a tragic love story that will make you feel all sorts of poetic angst, then you might like this movie. And besides, it's one of the movies nominated for Best Costume.

Sewing also plays a beautiful role in the movie. Fanny Brawne was a dressmaker and interested in fashion--she was always stitching. Another character, Keats' friend Charles Brown, ridiculed her for her fashions, and when Keats' love for her becomes apparent to Brown, he warns Keats that marrying her would be the end of his poetry, because he would have to make a living and finiancially support her taste for French ribbons. But what I loved was that Fanny's poetic soul was expressed through her sewing. Brown criticized her for not understanding poetry as he did, but her sewing and her dresses were her poems.

So here are a few pictures--it really was a pretty movie. It will inspire you to either sew a dress or read a poem, preferably one by John Keats.