Emily Dickinson, a Quiet Passion

The intention here is to create a novel in form and movement. It is like most Davies's films, styled in the same characteristic manner. The form means scenes progress in a way that is reminiscent of Bergman's Cries and Whispers' that is, complete in themselves and not always related to the previous action.

Within this template the film is quite successful: the design and the actors, all contribute to something that strives to make a film about an artist. That may not be very interesting and its presentation is quite static, but then, so were the lives of the people depicted.

Where it is flawed is the script, which, no doubt was crafted with some attention, yet, with a limited set of rhetorical devices: paradox, homily, hyperbole, irony, for instance; it soon becomes quite irritating. So many scenes run through a few set pieces with these rhetorical plays which are intended to amuse but repeat themselves and without any forward motion. There it resembles Bergman too: the self chastising, the self examination, accusation and reproach; the moral duty to become better, and while this may recreate the anxieties of the people involved, it is not accomplished writing.

Unfortunately this film has the moral worthiness of chapel instruction without a better insight into its subject.

"A Quiet Passion" from 2016 is a beautifully photographed and produced film about Emily Dickinson, here played by Cynthia Nixon. Some may be more familiar with the old Julie Harris vehicle about Dickenson, The Belle of Amherst, which she performed on stage.

As a young woman, Dickinson attended a female seminary but ultimately returned home to her family. She was very opinionated and rigid in her beliefs and considered eccentric. She became more and more reclusive and later on refused to leave her bedroom.

She wrote beautiful poetry, much of which was discovered after her death.

Dickinson was a troubled woman, preoccupied with death and no doubt suffered from depression which worsened over the years. She may have also been agoraphobic.

The film, written and directed by Terence Davies was overly long, slow, and boring, done in a pretentious manner. Someone who saw it the same time as I did described it as "starched." It did not draw in this viewer.

The acting was good, with Nixon doing a fine job as Emily and Jennifer Ehle, whom many remember from the wonderful Pride & Prejudice some years ago, gave a lovely performance as her sister Lavinia. Keith Carradine played their father; he was excellent and inspired casting.

"A Quiet Passion" was obviously a labor of love for Davies and for Nixon, and much care was taken with it. For me, it wasn't energized or accessible enough to truly enjoy, which is a shame, as it was treated too preciously.

I dragged myself to see a film about someone I knew nothing about - except from a line in a Simon and Garfunkel song - and the odd mention from friends years ago - assuming it could easily be a scriptwriters fantasy world - but at least a costume drama outlining the person, her surroundings and time.

It was in fact very moving - drawing you into a the completely unknown mind of this women and the people around her - no one left the cinema immediately but just stayed and stared - were they as upset as I was ?

It was all the more interesting coming one day after a very interesting documentary of the journey of the Mayflower migrants from 1608 when they fled to Holland for a new life and then to a ship in 1620 to cross the Atlantic so their children would still be English and not Dutch puritans - the documentary forces you to step into the minds and motives of these people, who should have perished but managed to survive due to a powerful faith - which appears just nonsense to me - but it does come from the times - the evolution of human consciousness.

Emily Dickinson is there 200 years after - still in a fossilized society - soon to be taken over by Irish Catholicism in Boston - in a style reminiscent of a theater play of the day - at first too witty and full of riposte, but which slowly takes hold of you.

The actors are all good, but the driving force is the question of what it was like to be a woman in this time - what did they actually think and do - why did Emily and her sister not marry but stay at home - was the world outside, and the society of men, so cold, foreign and formal that they stayed where they were sure there was warmth.

A good film if you want to realize you don't really understand how other people see the world - and to be moved by the fact they simply exist and feel, and are then snuffed out like a candle flame.

First, the good point. Cynthia Nixon was excellent, and her death scene was very harrowing.

However, this was so dull and dreary and full of inaccuracies. To me, the biggest let down was that Sue, the one true love of Emily's life, to whom she had written hundreds of letters and poems, was on screen for about 5 minutes in total. There was no indication that they were even close friends, let alone lovers!

There was no mention of Higginson, with whom she had corresponded frequently, and who was instrumental in publishing her poems. She never met Mabel Todd, and Samuel Bowles had been a family acquaintance for several years longer than suggested here.

Her mother's illness and death was also rushed, in that she had a stroke in one scene, and died in the next, when in fact there were 7 years between the two events.

My final gripe is that she was shown in a regular wooden coffin, when in fact she was buried in a white coffin.

Very disappointing to this Dickinson fan.

Emily Dickinson lived her entire life (1830-1886) in Amherst, Massachusetts, rarely leaving the town and, in middle age, not even leaving the family home. She never married and, in this biopic, only once falls seriously in love – with a married vicar who almost certainly did not know of her "quiet passion". A young man who courts her later in the movie has to talk to her unseen at the top of the stairs.

Dickinson's life lacks the stuff that might make a substantial movie. Cynthia Nixon does a valiant job of giving her substance – in conversations and arguments with her sister (Jennifer Ehle), her father (Keith Carradine, looking like a Mount Rushmore effigy) and visitors and relatives – but what little drama there is here comes from illness and death scenes, of which there are many, long drawn out. The overdone manners of the era are parodied in drawing-room scenes borrowed from Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde, scenes that are pleasingly comic but seem more than a little contrived. Nixon reads some of the verse in voice-over but the early efforts, celebrating Nature, are not in Walt Whitman's league and only the later poems anticipating (almost inviting) Death have any real resonance. It is for these that Emily Dickinson is mostly remembered.

The cinematography is splendid, and the costumes and the over- furnished sets convey a stifling sense of the period. A moment in which portraits of the younger Dickinsons morph into their older selves is exquisite and there's another nice one at the end. The script – and the direction – struggle to make a mountain out of the molehill that was Emily's life. I was constantly thinking how much more 'oomph' there is in an Austen or a Brontë adaptation.