It’s not a stretch to imagine James Cameron himself as the techo-geek who finally achieves what Cromwell’s Canter does in Surrogates. If we get depressed because we can’t stay in Pandora, why not develop the technology to make that very thing possible? If reality can’t be made to work for eight billion people, why not deliver the ultimate opiate to the masses? Surrogates, of course, is the cautionary-tale response to those questions. Part of society rebels against the artificiality of it all, setting up autonomous surrogate-free zones. Sure, they’re surrounded by rubble—but as Willis’ Greer finds out once he leaves his surrogate body behind, there’s a lot of simple Eden to be found if we but consign our avatars to their proper places.

When young woman-of-privilege Fanny Brawne attempts to “study” poetry at Keats’ feet, she tries to understand it by dissection—as if it were a matter of construction and a collection of choices, and a matter of digesting one great work of poetry after another in order to extract what’s nourishing and move on to the next. But Keats tells her: “Poetry is like a lake, and when the poet jumps into it, his purpose is not to swim immediately to shore, but to luxuriate in the water.” And this is what Campion’s film—and Campion herself, as a cinematic poet—does with the poem “Bright Star.”