A must-see film!!

We interrupt this Bontober/Octphoeberfest to bring you notice of a wonderful movie you really need to see!

This film got rave reviews in the LA Times and The New Yorker - which prompted me to investigate further.

I'm glad I did! It's about the last 2 years in the life of John Keats - played by Ben Whishaw - who died at age 25, sure that he was a failure as a poet. Now he is regarded as one of the major poets of the Romantic era and ranks up there with Milton and Shakespeare.

The film is well-crafted, very restrained, but evocative of another time and place. The music is beautiful, the characters are well-drawn, and the two major stars do a memorable job of reciting the poems throughout the film.

"A thing of beauty is [indeed] a joy forever."

"The Last Sonnet"

Written on a blank page in Shakespeare's poems, facing "A Lover's Complaint"

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art -
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No - yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.
1819