John Keats
I’m glad of the arrival of the new movie Bright Star, based on the life of poet John Keats. Really, it’s high time Hollywood produced a movie based on the romantic and absolutely fascinating life of this famous poet. Bright Star focuses on Keats’ relationship with his neighbor Fanny Brawne, and the subsequent influence Brawne has had on the subject and nature of his work. Hopefully, the film will spark a fresh wave of interest in Keats, someone whose life hasn’t provided the kind of mainstream biographical interest as his contemporaries, Byron and Shelley.
Bright Star also got me thinking about the many if-not-great then at least ’solid’ biopics that have recently been produced on the lives of poets. Of course, we don’t prescribe to a biographical reading of any author’s work (we are strictly Barthesian in believing that the author is dead), but we whole-heartedly enjoy the singular sensation of watching the real-life, actual persona of a poet — a creator of poetic fictions — become the subject of a fictional portrayal itself. No one can possibly argue that a Hollywood biopic has any relevance in the discipline of academic biography, so the pleasures we experience in watching them are intently and completely based on fictional — i.e., entertainment — value. These poetic biopics are wholly ‘meta’, unapologetically middle-brow, and greatly entertaining, with small trivia takeaways that become of value later in board games and dinner conversation. We love them! And, without further ado, here are our five favorites.
