Shining brightly, for a while

It’s a pity. “Bright Star” is such an entrancing and exquisitely crafted movie, yet it drags so noticeably toward the end that you walk away from it only wishing that it had been shorter.

Like a bright star, the film shines like a supernova before it burns out too soon, collapses on itself and leaves us with a cinematic black hole.

OK, that’s overstating it. It’s still a good movie. But by the end, it is no longer a great movie.

What we get too much of is the death of poet John Keats. This story of his great love and muse, Fanny Brawne, must by necessity end with his early death. This isn’t a surprise: We know from English class that Keats died young. All the Romantic poets did, except Worsdworth, who should have.

Keats is played by Ben Whishaw and Fanny by Abbie Cornish, and it is to the film’s considerable benefit that it concentrates mainly on Abbie. As shown here, she is the one with the spark of life, she is the one who is flirtatious and funny and interesting, she is the one whose emotions spring from things that affect her. Keats, on the other hand, is just morose and moody and, you know, poety.

Cornish, an Australian actress little known on these shores (she was in the disappointing “Stop-Loss) is a revelation as Fanny. Intentionally made to look plain, she plays her as a frothy, good-time girl, in an early 19th century sort of way. She loves to dance and she loves parties, her seeming insubstantiality heightened by her interest in fashion.

But beneath this exterior gloss lies real depth of feeling, as Cornish makes clear in her carefully nurtured performance. She is smart and quick-witted in a time when intelligence and wit were not necessarily desired in women. And her fashions do look fairly stunning.

It is clear what Keats sees in her, but less obvious is what she sees in him. In this picture, he is a drip, given to prolonged periods of inactivity while waiting for inspiration to strike. When she first meets him, his poetry isn’t even all that good -- a situation that is resolved when she becomes his muse, and he matures.

We can assume that she also sees in him a certain attractiveness. Whishaw (he starred in “Perfume” and was Sebastian in the theatrical version of “Brideshead Revisited”) is darkly handsome as the doomed poet. But he’s kind of dull.

Writer-director Jane Campion specializes in movies about strong, multifaceted women -- her best films include “The Piano,” “An Angel at My Table” and “Sweetie.” Fannie Brawne fits in nicely with those characters, which is why we can’t help but wish Fanny would fall for Keats’ strong and personable best friend, Charles Armitage Brown, played by Paul Schneider (the brother in “Lars and the Real Girl”).

Understandably, however, Campion feels compelled to adhere to what actually happened.

To this end, she quotes with good effect from Keats’ letters to Fanny (her letters to him have been lost), and even from a few of his poems. The poems do show his brilliance, and they are less of a drag on the story than you might think.

But other parts of the film are. A great Romantic poet deserves a great romantic movie, and “Bright Star” fits the bill. One just wishes the last act -- the prolonged dying act -- were cut in half.