By Lisa Gill and Carolyn Turgeon

IF you want to pass a couple of hours swooning to the poetry of a gorgeous, doomed romance and suspecting you might have been born in the wrong century altogether, we recommend Jane Campion’s 2009 film Bright Star, which is about the last few years of the poet John Keats and his one true love, Fanny Brawne. Campion wrote the film after reading Andrew Motion’s biography Keats and becoming captivated by the poet/heartbreaker. After reading the love letters Keats sent to Fanny, Campion was in love. Who wouldn’t be?

The film is full of Keats’s own words from said letters, which are just as romantic today: “For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright; a fairer word than fair.” Another example: “You must write immediately and do all you can to console me … make [your letter] rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me … write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been.” How can a modern-day email compare?

“It’s been such an amazing and incredible journey for me, getting close to John Keats and also Shelley and Byron,” Campion told NPR upon the film’s release. “I think what they responded to was their own spirits, and that was the Lord for them. And to me that seems like great instructions for life.”

In the film, there’s a quiet tension from the moment the two lovers interact on screen that sets the tone for the entire movie. Once a mutual attraction is formed, it’s nurtured with furtive glances through windows—Keats often inside, Fanny in the garden—or through knocking on the shared wall of the house with Fanny’s family on one side and Keats and his friend Mr. Brown on the other. At times playful, there is an undercurrent of growing despair once Fanny witnesses John’s brother Tom suffering from and succumbing to tuberculosis. And then, of course, Keats himself will succumb, in true Garbo-esque fashion.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain______

To thy high requiem become a sod.

Forlorn !the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music : Do I wake or sleep?