April is National Poetry Month, a tradition established by the Academy of American Poets in 1996. Even if you aren’t a fan of poetry, there exist innumerable compelling biopics about well-known poets and writers that stand on their own as well-made movies.
That being said, there are also terrible biopics that simplify or exaggerate the lives of famous creative wordsmiths. This list compares five fantastic movies about poets with five awful ones.
Lyrical: Bright Star (2009)
Australian director Jane Campion is responsible for this moving and elegiac film about the British Romantic poet John Keats, who died when he only 25-years-old from tuberculosis. The movie follows Keats, played by Ben Whishaw, through his final three years, 1818 to 1821, as he develops a romantic relationship with a woman named Fanny Brawne, played by Abbie Cornish, and begins to find his voice as a poet.
The film’s title refers to a line from a sonnet Keats wrote when he was dating Brawne: “Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art.” Whishaw and Cornish have been praised for their understated yet profound performances.
Terrible: Sylvia (2003)
Instead of showcasing her talent as a poet, Christine Jeffs’s biopic about the 20th-century American poet Sylvia Plath focuses on her problematic marriage to British poet Ted Hughes and her eventual suicide in 1963. Gwenyth Paltrow plays Plath, and Hughes is played by Daniel Craig.
The movie reduces Plath’s story to that of a heartbroken housewife who takes her own life as a result of her husband’s infidelity. In reality, Plath struggled with mental health issues her entire life, and her dynamic creative output deserves a more nuanced cinematic rendering.
Lyrical: A Quiet Passion (2016)
Cynthia Nixon gives an engrossing performance as 19th-century American poet Emily Dickison, a reclusive woman whose work was not published until after her death in 1886. Dickinson spent her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she composed over 1,800 poems.
Moody and slow-paced, direct Terence Davies does his best to emulate Dickinson’s contemplative and intense writing style. Alongside Nixon, the film co-stars Jennifer Ehle and Keith Carradine.
Terrible: Set Fire To The Stars (2014)
The 20th century Welsh poet Dylan Thomas became a popular writer in both the ’40s and ’50s in the United States and the UK, known for his public and radio performances. Thomas was also known for his bombastic nature and excessive drinking.
Andy Goddard’s film Set Fire to the Stars is loosely based on Thomas’s life, and it follows a graduate poetry student played by Elijah Wood who decides to track down Thomas, played by Celyn Jones. Jones does the best he can with the script, but the movie doesn’t come close to capturing the propulsive creative energy that Thomas exuded.
Lyrical: Slam (1998)
Marc Levin’s film Slam pays tribute to the tradition of slam poetry while also showcasing a contemporary poet and musician: Saul Williams, who co-wrote the screenplay. Williams plays Ray Joshua, a young black man in Washington D.C. caught between two worlds: one of poetry and one of poverty-fueled violence.
Joshua is incarcerated after one of his friends is killed during a drug deal, and he is moved through a judicial system pitched against him, one he combats with words instead of more violence. While not a biopic, Slam exposes the social and racial inequalities that suppress creative expression.
Terrible: Tales Of Ordinary Madness (1981)
Prolific Italian director Marco Ferreri is responsible for this indulgent tale inspired by the life and work of American poet and novelist Charles Bukowski. Ben Gazzara plays a fictionalized version of Bukowski, Charles Serking, who ditches his girlfriend in Los Angeles after he gets a book deal.
The film depicts Serking’s sexual escapades in great detail, as well as his excessive reliance on alcohol. The female characters in the movie are one-dimensional, and it perpetuates the tortured artist trope while glamorizing toxic masculinity.
Lyrical: Poetry (2010)
A South Korean gem, Poetry is a stunning, emotionally complex film about a woman in her 60s who decides to study poetry as she struggles through the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Directed by Lee Chang-dong, the film pays tribute to both the beauty of poetry and the depleted value of creative expression in contemporary society.
The movie’s protagonist, Yang Mi-ja, learns her disrespectful teenaged grandson has been implicated in the drowning of a local girl. As the situation intensifies, Yang Mi-ja’s only solace turns out to be her poetry class.
Terrible: Little Ashes (2008)
Little Ashes focuses on three young Spanish artists who played major roles in the cultural revolution curbed by the Spanish Civil War: Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, and Federico Garcia Lorca. Bunuel and Dali are remembered as an experimental filmmaker and a surrealist visual artist, respectively, who lived full lives, but Lorca was a poet and playwright murdered by Nationalists at the beginning of the war in 1938.
Little Ashes digs into the hypothesized romantic relationship between Dali and Lorca, played by Robert Pattinson and Javier Beltrán. The movie never manages to find its footing, jumping between high art, goofball comedy, and dramatic love story.
Lyrical: Before Night Falls (2000)
Julian Schnabel’s harrowing biopic about Cuban poet and revolutionary Reinaldo Arenas stars Javier Bardem and Olivier Martinez. Bardem’s performance as Arenas is moving. Like many young Cubans, Arenas was an early supporter, and then critic, of Fidel Castro’s government. A gay man, Arenas spent years in and out of prison before finally leaving his home country and moving to the United States.
Like the other lyrical films on this list, Before Night Falls incorporates Arenas’s writing and life story in visually cogent ways. Arenas died from AIDS-related causes in 1990.
Terrible: Total Eclipse (1995)
Total Eclipse stars a young Leonardo DiCaprio as the subversive and modern 19th-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud. DiCaprio acts alongside David Thewlis, who plays older poet Paul Verlaine. The movie highlights their radical personalities while depicting the tumultuous love affair they engaged in over many years, culminating with Rimbaud shooting Verlaine in the hand.
Despite the powerful performances from Thewlis and DiCaprio, the film’s uneven representation of their lives and legacies deny audiences access to the depth and importance of their creative outputs. Instead, their stories are minimized to a melodramatic squabble between lovers.