Review - Bright Star

This might be the most eagerly awaited (and dreaded) film in the literary calendar this year. I have a friend doing a PhD on Keats who is so emotionally invested that she can’t actually bear to watch it.

Keats, for some reason I’ve never been quite able to fathom, has often been idealised as some sort of asexual aesthetite - as anyone who’s actually read Keats’s poetry should be able to tell, the man was overwhelmingly sensual, even sexual, and was pretty ambivalent on the beauty of art vs. sexuality of life debate - witness his lines on the lovers frozen forever in art in ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’:

Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Is this the triumph of the immortality of art, or a torment akin to the most horrific in Hades? This film will hopefully offer a corrective to this misconception in that it is necessarily focussed on Keats as a man – a man with sexual desires and emotions that were instrumental in the shaping of his poetry.

Freud famously summed up the reasons to write as ‘money, fame and the love of women’. Keats desperately, perhaps more than anyone before or after, wanted all of these three things – his tragedy is that he achieved one of them, fame, too late, and the other he managed, love, was blighted by his lack of success in the last, money, and by his early death. But there is another tragedy in this story - Fanny’s, who, without Keats would have been a nobody in history: even with Keats she has still been a bit-part in his story, long ignored, misunderstood, and even vilified. In life, she was rejected as a bad influence by most of his friends; in death, she was lambasted for keeping Keats’s letters and the bequeathing them to her children for publication. And it is this tragedy that Jane Campion concerns herself with: when Keats departs for Italy, so too does he depart from the film – we stay with Fanny in Hampstead. This is a very good move – if Keats’s reputation has ossified him in the public mind, Fanny is an enigma, the perfect subject for story making. Whilst Keat’s love-letters to her are now considered among the greatest achievements of English literature, hers were burned: her story has remained mostly untold.

The film however, stays remarkably true to what of Keats and Fanny’s relationship can be objectively verified as fact from letters and biographic sources. Even bits which seem like modern overlays – Keats calls Fanny ‘minxtress’, are based upon reality – Keats admits in his letters to finding Fanny so forward that he did, in fact, calh her a ‘minx’. In fact, this is a film immersed in Keats – in his letters, his poems, his numerous biographies. Lines from his letters crop up constantly, adding an authenticity to the story without seeming imposed – iconic Keastian lines – such as his heart-wrenching words on first coughing blood: ‘I know the colour of that blood; - it is arterial blood; - I cannot be deceived in that colour; - that drop of blood is my death-warrant; - I must die’ are left out – this line would be too much of a set piece for such a subtle film. Its Keastianess goes beyond the level of narrative into the very mood of the film – the cinematography indolently lingers on beautiful images – of landscapes, of the lovers and moves with the lush, cloyed, sensuous, slowness, almost paralysis, of a Keatsian sonnet. These words are usually pejoratives – Keats has the power to turn pejoratives into positives. This film is an artwork in its own right. One beautifully arresting image – Fanny sitting among a field of bluebells wearing a matching dress, is the most gorgeous still I’ve seen from any film recently. I also love the idea that Fanny, with her flair for fashion, has dressed herself (and her sister) to match the landscape – evidently Campion shares her love for clothing.

One of the things I dislike intensely about films about poets is that they go around quoting their own poetry constantly – as if their egos are so enormous that they think that their own poetry is the most apt thing to say about everything. In real life, you’d have to be the most fantastic poet in the world before you could get away with spouting your own poetry on the slightest provocation. Even then you’d still be an egomaniac. Just an eloquent one. I understand that this is generally to introduce some of the poetry to those who have never read it, or, worse still, to induce that smug feeling of self-satisfaction among those that have when they recognise a line. This film used the poetry more sparingly than most – and more interestingly – it actually used the poetry rather than just shoving it in there as a padding around the narrative. There is a brilliant moment when Keats, reciting his ‘When I Have Fears that I Shall Cease to Be’, falters, and claims to have forgotten his last lines – but one suspects that this moment follows on so quickly from his brother’s death that these lines are simply too painful to be said aloud. This did a great thing – credited the audience with some insight and left it there – no need to spell it out. I was really hoping that when Keats’s friend Brown tried to catch Fanny out by asking her if she did not find Milton’s rhymes in Paradise Lost too ‘pouncey’, to which she demurely replied in the negative, that it would be left there. Unfortunately, the next scene had him roaring about blank verse – but perhaps I was expecting something a little too rarefied or even snobbish – and it was still evidence of a great wry and intellectual sense of humour which permeates this tragic film.

Actually, something astonishing happened to me during this film. Keats’s friend was reciting lines from Endymion to precede his defence of it to Fanny, and these lines hit me with such force of emotion and freshness that I involuntarily welled up (I know – you’re not meant to cry till the end of the film, and even then I appear to have been doing rather too much of it lately) Firstly, poetry hasn’t done this to me enough lately. Secondly, I’ve never really liked Endymion. Like Fanny, I think the opening something rather perfect, but like Keats’s friend (I know I should know the name), I think it great in some parts and immature in others. Like Fanny’s sister, I prefer my poems short, and most unfortunately, like the reviewer from Blackwood’s magazine, I am sometimes too intellectually lazy to sieve through the good for the sublime. This was sublime. I spent the rest of the film in a rather strange heightened emotional state – although, the film being so beautiful, it was a particularly Keatsian experience of a strange pleasure/pain nexus. I sort of floated home afterwards feeling strangely out of my own body and disconnected from the rainy, dark streets of Bristol, connecting with reality only to drop into a bookshop to buy Keats’s poems (I had decided the selected was no longer enough), letters, and Andrew Motion’s biography on which the film is based, and then settled down on my sofa to read. I can give no higher praise than this.

Unfortunately for me, Bright Star seems to have done this to everyone – I have now been searching for Motion’s biography for twenty-four hours and have just found out that even the publishers have sold out of copies. A run on Keats – if only he had lived to see the day.

On at cinemas nationwide. Go to http://www.brightstar-movie.com/ for more information.

On Now - Front Room 2009: Totterdown Art Trail, Bristol

If you fancy a poke around in artists' studios (and let's face it - it's brilliantly appealing to the slightly horrendous nosy side of all of us), totter down to Totterdown this weekend (sorry - I've never being able to say anything about Totterdown without invoking wordplay so feeble that it barely qualifies as pun).


It's always inspiring meeting the artists and seeing the spaces where they work when seeing the art - and sometimes they even give you homemade cake too!


There's over 200 artists taking part in over 60 venues around Totterdown, from D. Brooke's paintings and installations at The Oxford Pub, Oxford Street (the turf bike looks fab), through Linda Gates's ceramics of everyday objects - inspired by pop-art but with a quirky DIY-twist - at 13, Hawthorne Street to Rachel Heaton's stunning seascapes at Totterdown Baptist Church, Wells Road.


Join in a communal knitting project at 19, Summer Hill; there's music and poetry going on at the Shakespeare; and if it all gets a bit too cultural, Sean Busby and Richard Jones from The Totterdown Press will be making cider outside number 31 Balmain Street.


Front Room art trail takes place Friday 20th Nov, 6-9pm; Saturday and Sunday 21st & 22nd, 12-6pm. Go to http://www.frontroom.org.uk/ for more information.

Review - Welsh National Opera, Madam Butterfly, Bristol Hippodrome

This evening I was going with the boy, which meant that not only had I got plush seats near the front, but we also went out for a meal first. In hindsight, this turned out to be a mistake. Having left the cafe, which was two minutes walk from the theatre, ten minutes, according to the cafe clock, before the production started, we somehow contrived to arrive after the performance had started. Apparently, this was my fault, as I work in the cafe, and therefore should have realised that the clock was slow. My defence, that the clock being slow is the only thing that prevents me from being late to work every day and was therefore something that I’d never experienced before as a problem, didn’t go down well. A bad start.

Anyway, all of this meant that we didn’t get to our plush seats until the interval, but had to stand at the back. Thos proves that a) you should never trust clocks and b) as there were about 60 people doing the same thing as us, performances should never start promptly. This meant that we couldn’t see the subtitles, so, without their guidance, this is what appeared to be happening in the first act:

Something colonial was happening in Japan which involved some kind of manly colonial chat, and then said men smoked cigars whilst watching Japanese women dance. Main man falls in love with main woman. Everyone seems happy. There is a party and possibly a wedding. There appears to be a song about sake, but that could have been my imagination. The arrival of an angry fat bald man in an enormous white robe is heralded by a small boy flailing his arms and the clashing of cymbals. Evidently this has something to do with main woman shouldn’t have fallen in love with main man, as angry man hits at her a bit with a very soft looking whip. It doesn’t look like it can hurt very much but she falls to the ground anyway. Presumably it’s a pride thing. Party crowd tuts at one of them, but I can’t tell which, and then leaves. Man and woman left alone. They sing, presumably about the fact that they’re in love and about the apparent difficulties that I haven’t fully understood. She prances around, her body language and tone of music suggesting that she’s oscillating between hope and fear. It sounds lovely but goes on for a long time. The boy is clutching at his face in pain. I want it to be the interval. Eventually it is the interval.

I push my way in the opposite direction to everyone else. My way is blocked by old men congregating around the ice cream stand and braying in fantastically posh voices about their wives. One’s wife is here, one’s isn’t. They both look over the moon about their respective state of affairs, which I presume speaks volumes about their respective marriages. I am not in a good mood.

I find our seats. They are in the front row. A violinist plays practically in my face and the woman next to me fusses over whether or not I missed the first act. The boy gives me some wine and jelly babies. This all makes me feel better. I can now see the subtitles. Opera really needs subtitles. As we’re watching Butterfly decline in her hilltop house waiting for her husband to come back (turns out he’s a bit of a cad, which I would have known if I’d understood the first half), it struck me that the plots of both operas I’d seen in the last two days followed an incredibly similar trajectory, not just in the tragic fate of the heroine, but also in the fact that once these women have abandoned their old lives for love, they lose their financial independence. Clearly you can’t have both a man and money in opera universe. Unfortunately, this woman doesn’t get either. It also made me wonder about that stock figure of literature, the wronged woman dying for love. Why is literature, and apparently, opera, fascinated with her? Is it for slightly misogynistic aesthetic reasons – Edgar Allan Poe one called the death of a beautiful woman ‘the most poetical topic in the world’, or is there a genuine sympathy, even solidarity, between these artists and women? The ivory tower can easily be mistaken for Rapunzel’s, after all. As I decided I was probably watching the thing for a mixture of the two reasons, and wondering if my enjoyment thus made me slightly hypocritical, I decided to stop thinking and enjoy it.

Again, the interminable fates of opera worked their force on the protagonist. As Butterfly and her maid entombed themselves in their petal strewn house, their silhouettes through the wall looked so ghostly that her actual suicide seemed more like a formality than a choice. Again, the set was beautiful – cherry trees straight from a Japanese-inspired Christmas card framed a house with semi-transparent sliding doors. Although these doors kept being elaborately opened and closed, their fragility and transparency seemed to be inviting the audience to question ideas of the public and private, and Butterfly’s ability to shut out her suitors whilst remaining open for her husband. As Butterfly ceremoniously changed back into her wedding clothes and attempted to transform herself back into the bride she had been, the loose hair and dress had once looked flowing and feminine now looked wild and threatening, as if they could strangle her at any moment. Again, the inevitability of the ending only served to make it feel more poignant, although this time my sadness was tinged with anger at the fact that this man wasn’t even worth moping over. As with La Traviata, if you enjoy bawling your eyes out, brilliant fun.

Best things about the opera:
- You’ll definitely see everyone you know over the age of 60 in the interval.
- Subtitles.

Go to http://www.wno.org.uk/ for details on both operas.
The Welsh National Opera will be at Bristol Hippodrome until the 21st November and will move to The Mayflower, Southampton, on the 25th. Go to bristolhippodrome.org.uk, or http://www.mayflower.org.uk/.

Review - Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler at the British Museum

Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler is the last in the British Museum’s series of history’s great rulers, which started with Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, and his sell-out Terracotta Army in 2008, and having travelled Westward round the globe and 1700 years in time, ends in 1520, with the Spanish conquest of Moctezuma’s empire. Although the short-lived Aztec nation was born and extinguished during the period of the European Renaissance, Western historiography has tended to portray it was the last ‘ancient’ civilization – a tendency that the exhibition makes apparent, began almost immediately after the Spanish conquest, with imperial portraits portraying Moctezuma in the role of ‘noble savage’, simultaneously Europeanised and aesthetically exoticised into a symbol of a lost world that would appeal to European eyes.

If the positioning of Moctezuma as the last in a line of Ancient world emperors, a problem that a finite four-part series dealing with such an infinite topic as empire was bound to face, does little to question this, one of the most fascinating and valuable facets of this exhibition is that it seeks to interrogate this Westernised viewpoint by juxtaposing Aztec and Spanish artifacts and historical documents. This suggests alternatives to the famous story that we think we know – for example, whilst the official story of Moctezuma’s death has him fatally injured when stoned by his own people, indigenous Mexican sources contain a picture of him with a recognizably Spanish-looking sword sticking out of his back. Thankfully, the British Museum’s curators are too good historians to simply replace one narrative with another, but let both sit uneasily alongside one another, inviting and encouraging the visitor to question the motives behind why each wanted to portray Moctezuma in a certain way.

This is one of the difficulties and points of interest of the exhibition: it may be arranged around the figure of Moctezuma, but it is practically impossible to access the man himself except through highly biased and politicized representations from one side or the other. In certain details, the fact that he chose the symbol of kingship as his own personal symbol, rather akin to Julius Caesar taking on the name of Caesar as his own, and in his naive acceptance of Cortes, a personality convinced of his own right and righteousness seems to shine through, and as such, he appears an unlikable yet tragic figure, so obviously, to our Western eyes, sowing the seeds of his own destruction. But that is as far as we can go with Moctezuma as a man – he is too shrouded in myth and too culturally remote to be comprehensible. As for portraits, which so often give us a feeling (even if false) of intimacy: the Spanish portraits are so blatantly fictionalised (in some, Moctezuma is indistinguishable from his Spanish conquerors) and the Mexica (which is, despite the exhibitions title, apparently what we should be calling them, Aztec being a misnomer – albeit a misnomer probably now too ingrained to dispel) don’t seem to be particularly interested in individual personalities, their art being more focused on the symbolic. Moctezema’s face is indistinguishable; he is identified only by his symbol, the symbol of Kingship. He is a King, not a man.

And as a king, in relation to his kingdom, he is fascinating, and it is as a king that he provides structure to the exhibition – his reign provides the perfect focus and narrative to explore Aztec civilization and its extinction. And as a civilisation, it is profoundly disturbing. As Laura Cumming has put it so brilliantly in her Observer review

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/sep/20/moctezuma-aztec-ruler-review): ‘this is a culture of blood and rock’. The blood pours from enormous stone monuments - their pictorial depiction of their temples has a stream of blood running from each door – The BM has been accused of underplaying the bloodthirstiness of the empire, although gore on this scale probably speaks for itself. It is a culture of war and death: their earth god is imagined as an enormous pair of jaws stretched open around the surface of the earth, demanding human nourishment. Most of their gods seem to relate to war, all are fanged, and the walkway entrance to the sacred square in the middle of their city was lined with skulls. Even in small details - a pair of goblets depicts skulls with purple blotches, which the explanative caption informs us represent the remnants of the victim’s flayed skin - these artifacts are permeated with violence. Aztec human sacrifice is often anaesthetised, kept from being questioned by the sense that we, with our Western ethical and societal codes, could never understand such an alien culture. This is true, and this sense of disconnectedness shines through this exhibition, but, faced with the violent relics of a violent empire, one cannot help but think that the Mexica nobility, savage imperialists as they were, differed only from their Spanish conquerors in martial equipment and guile. Morally, they were their equals.

For bookings and information, see http://www.britishmuseum.org/.

Coming Soon - Statues Die Too

17th November- 28th November 2009 12-6PM

They inhabit islands, museums, what were once public squares for the proletariat. Here there exist these fine specimens of muscular perfection, preserved representations of the human image, people of the past. They appear within the desolate landscape of monumental ruins, silent relics set in stone, not disturbing the animals that graze at their feet…

Statues Die Too is a group show presenting new works by Gabriele Beveridge, Rose O’Gallivan, Niamh Riordan, Poppy Jones and Lise Hovesen. Using traditional and contemporary printmaking processes, photomontage, film, restoration and sculptural installations, the exhibition draws on the concerns about the relation between history, culture and obsolescence explored by Chris Marker and Alan Resnais in their 1953 film Les Statues Meurent Aussi.

Taking place in a glass roofed car park in South Kensington. Statues Die Too sees five artists seeking to interrogate the relationship between their own practice and the basic human inclination to preserve, restore and reproduce. By addressing these issues in a range of media – from tradition printmaking to mobile phone technology – the artists deconstruct the relationship between memorabilia and memory, art and archive.

The conjunction of different media with different concepts of history allows new and fruitful associations to take place. Lise Hovesen’s descision to exhibit a restored Victorian carriage alongside a film made recently in the Zone at Chernobyl leads the viewer to challenging conclusions about destruction and restoration. Niamh Riordan’s idiosyncratic projection devices question the course of cinematic history itself, creating alternative modes of projection that emphasise the role of illusion in all cinematic practice.

The exhibition also shows the artists utilizing traditional and time consuming craft-based processes. Rose O’Gallivan’s delicate etchings take structural designs and reproduce them as etched motifs. By displaying her work along the folded gallery walls O’Gallivan aligns these archaic designs with the contemporary architecture of the space.

Gabriele Beveridge’s work in photography and assemblage interrogates the role of the gaze in constructing history. By combining images and other remnants in seductive groupings Beveridge reveals how images and memories become imbued with meaning in order to tell coherent narratives. Similarly, Poppy Jones uses traditional printmaking processes to reproduce video footage and images taken on mobile phones. In doing so she imagines a culture that has forgotten how to assemble representation back into a meaning and history, leaving us with mysterious printed artefacts whose provenance we are unable to determine.

On Now! - Javier Rodriguez’s Chromatic Aberrations and David Stearn: Works, at The HIVE / T1+2 Gallery

If the on-again-off-again November rain is getting to you, and you’re longing for a bit of proper weather, then head down to Greatorex Street in Whitechapel for the relaunch of T1+2 Gallery as The HIVE.

The two-part show features Venezuelan artist Javier Rodriguez’s ‘Chromatic Aberrations’ and young Brit David Stearn’s ‘Works’. The centrepiece of Stearn’s offering is a snow machine, which fills the gallery with a (slightly toxic) snowstorm and piles up in satisfying drifts on the gallery floor. Stearn’s work, which has previously included sculptures made of balloons, uses industrial materials to interrogate the relation between ‘built’ and ‘sculpted’. In this case the only built things in the exhibition are the stands which the snow machine rests on, so Stearn’s designation of himself as a sculptor is somewhat reliant on the exhibition invigilator’s facility with an on/off switch.

Rodriguez’s Chromatic Aberrations are a series of maculaturas, overprint sheets that display the cumulative blottings of an industrial printing press. Rodriquez is interested in the overproliferation of the mass-media and his works use solid and near-illegible masses of stained paper to question the veracity and opacity of the popular press.

The exhibition also features a film made at the nearby Aldgate Press, which is projected in the corridor outside the exhibition. The film neatly encapsulates the ideas that the two shows share about machinery and process. Walking down the darkened corridor towards the projection screen you feel rather as it you’re travelling along a gigantic industrial production line. Once you arrive at the gallery door, right in the glare of the projector, the line spits you out into the blinding whiteness of the exhibition, and straight into Stearn’s snowstorm.

Javier Rodriguez’s Chromatic Aberrations and David Stearn: Works, at The HIVE / T1+2 Gallery, Greatorex Street, Whitechapel. Tue-Sunday 12-6 until 6^th December.

Review - The Museum of Lost Things - BAC

Grandiose titles seem to be all the rage in art-land at the moment. First, there was the wonderful The Museum of Everything, an outsider-art exhibition that opened on Primrose Hill during Frieze (and is still open, go if you get the chance). Then The Age of the Marvellous opened in Marylebone, followed closely by the Embassy show (in the former Sierra Leonean embassy, no less) and Laurence Owen’s Gold at 20 Hoxton Square. BIGGER, these exhibitions seem to be saying, is better. (“And if you don’t believe us, we’ll drop a gold ingot on your head”).

Down in south London, titles have been a little less bombastic, but no less expansive. During November the BAC picked up the baton with a two day showing of the wonderful installation, The Museum of Lost Things, part of its Not for me, not for you, but for us season of workshops and talks. The Museum of Lost Things was much less high-gloss than the rest of these offerings (in fact it was a bit like being in the counselling room at a Steiner school). For simplicity, lack of pretention and sheer all-out beauty, it was one of the best things I’ve seen all year. And there was free cake.

Those of you who went to Latitude this year are probably already familiar with the Museum’s predecessor, The Tree of Lost Things. The Museum, the version which appeared at NFMNFYBFY (phew!) on the 1^st-2^nd November, was very similar to the original, but in the place of an actual tree, the artists had threaded string across the space. Coupled with the BAC’s cosy chairs and ‘cup-of-tea-in-a- cup-and-saucer’ aesthetic, it looked rather like bunting at a village fete.

The idea of The Tree of Lost Things is simple. First, you have to think hard about all of the things (people, objects, morals....) that you’ve lost in your life. Then, once you’ve selected your most poignant, immediate or amusing loss (depending on your level of denial, I guess), you write your loss onto a luggage label. Finally you release your loss into the public domain, by tying it onto the tree (or, at BAC, string).

Once the label is tied, you have to log your loss into the Ledger of Lost Things. Type of loss; date of loss and, most interestingly, weight of loss (there’s a scale helpfully provided. I think virginity weighed in at about 8oz...), all get inscribed, alongside a list of the people involved in the event. It’s a fascinating read and I’m sure some of the dreamier geeks amongst us could turn the data into some really spiffing graphs.

Allegra, one of the artists who devised the tree, told me that the losses tend to be split into age groups. For children, it’s objects that make up the bulk of their losses. For older people: friends, lovers and relations. Twentysomethings, the largest group represented, tend to chose less tangible, more ephemeral things: morals or emotions - dignity features highly. When I read it, the most recent entry in the ledger was the rather troubling ‘my freedom’, a loss which was attributed, in matter of fact penstrokes to: ‘my son’.

Browsing amongst the dangling labels, or through the pages of the ledger, you’re faced with the difference between just losing things, and leaving them behind. Some of the labels seemed to see the loss as part of an ongoing process, following their declarations with the coda: ‘…but then I found my boyfriend/new house/self respect…’. It made me wonder about the power of collective action; if taking part in the installation can help with the process of leaving things behind.

Certainly the artists feel as though they’ve been left with something precious. They talked earnestly to me about the sheer weight of the losses they’ve been left with, and the responsibility that they felt towards them. They wondered about devising some kind of filing system in which to store the luggage labels, and talked earnestly about systems for cross-referencing. For now, though, the labels are being stored in a series of battered suitcases. If you’re an archiving genius, and can think of a way to file ‘Dignity’ so it takes in both ‘in death’ and ‘when wearing no knickers’, then I’m sure the artists would love to hear from you.

The Museum of Lost Things, part of ‘Not for me, not for you, but for us’ at Battersea Arts Centre. 1st-2nd November www.bac.org.uk