The only positive comment I can make after wasting over two hours watching this sorry mess of a film is that Cynthia Nixon does a creditable job of acting in spite of a lame and mordant script. Most of the rest of the cast for the most part sounds as if they were doing an initial read-through. The direction is stagy and there is an excess of glacially slow pans around candle-lit interiors that contribute nothing to the story line, such that it is. The story told is highly inaccurate. It characterizes Dickinson as a reclusive, shrewish, depressive, neurotically cruel bitch. ED actually had some close and possibly even romantic relationships both in her youth and in middle age -- you would not know that from this selective script.
The script also fails to convey her love of Nature and her quiet joy in life, even when she cloistered herself. In fact she was more widely known for her expertise in gardening than her poetry while she lived, but she is barely shown outside her rooms throughout the movie. There are many imagined unpleasant confrontations and bitter exchanges between characters in the film that have no apparent basis in reality. It's more a contrived soap opera in period dress than bio-pic; "Desperate Housewives of Amherst" might have been a more accurate title.
As to direct contradictions to the truth: Dickinson's sister in law was an acquaintance known to her years before she married into the family -- the film shows her as a stranger being introduced to the family after the marriage. Dickinson also NEVER met her brother's mistress, Mabel Todd, let alone caught them in flagrante delicto, as shown in the film. In fact, Todd respected ED's work and was one of the people who made sure that Dickinson's poems were posthumously published. ED was also not emotionally close to her distant mother, though the film turns their relationship into a sappy cliché. In a final blow to ED's memory, the film shows her coffin being hauled to the cemetery in a horse drawn hearse. In fact, per her wishes, her loved ones placed her favorite flowers in the casket with her and then carried it by hand through fields of buttercups to the family plot.
This film left myself and my companion (a published poet who teaches writing at University level) feeling drained, depressed and disappointed. There were so many aspects of ED's personality and incidents in her life that could have enriched and enlivened this film -- perhaps they were left on the cutting room floor? Honestly, if you have not read Emily Dickinson's poetry before seeing this mordant flick, you are not going to be inspired to do so afterwards.
The script also fails to convey her love of Nature and her quiet joy in life, even when she cloistered herself. In fact she was more widely known for her expertise in gardening than her poetry while she lived, but she is barely shown outside her rooms throughout the movie. There are many imagined unpleasant confrontations and bitter exchanges between characters in the film that have no apparent basis in reality. It's more a contrived soap opera in period dress than bio-pic; "Desperate Housewives of Amherst" might have been a more accurate title.
As to direct contradictions to the truth: Dickinson's sister in law was an acquaintance known to her years before she married into the family -- the film shows her as a stranger being introduced to the family after the marriage. Dickinson also NEVER met her brother's mistress, Mabel Todd, let alone caught them in flagrante delicto, as shown in the film. In fact, Todd respected ED's work and was one of the people who made sure that Dickinson's poems were posthumously published. ED was also not emotionally close to her distant mother, though the film turns their relationship into a sappy cliché. In a final blow to ED's memory, the film shows her coffin being hauled to the cemetery in a horse drawn hearse. In fact, per her wishes, her loved ones placed her favorite flowers in the casket with her and then carried it by hand through fields of buttercups to the family plot.
This film left myself and my companion (a published poet who teaches writing at University level) feeling drained, depressed and disappointed. There were so many aspects of ED's personality and incidents in her life that could have enriched and enlivened this film -- perhaps they were left on the cutting room floor? Honestly, if you have not read Emily Dickinson's poetry before seeing this mordant flick, you are not going to be inspired to do so afterwards.