A Quiet Passion (2016) User Reviews

Neither quiet nor passion

[howard.schumann · 7/10 · 29 October 2016]

The great American poet Emily Dickinson wrote:

"Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality."

Whether or not Dickinson stopped for life, it kindly stopped for her and her immortality is enshrined in the legacy of the 1800 exquisite poems she left, only ten of which were published during her lifetime. She did not leave any commentaries to interpret her work, but left them for us to understand and explain. One interpretation of her life and work is provided by Terence Davies in his film A Quiet Passion, a sympathetic but overwritten and curiously wooden look at her life and the influences that shaped her art. Starring Cynthia Nixon ("The Adderall Diaries") as Emily, Davies traces Dickinson's life in a standard linear format. Raised in the Puritan New England city of Amherst, Massachusetts (the film is shot near Antwerp, Belgium) the poet was lonely and secretive throughout her life, seldom left home, and visitors were few.

She stayed with her family all of her life, living through births, marriages, and deaths but always setting aside the early morning hours in her study to compose. Bright and outgoing as a young woman, Emily is portrayed as becoming more isolated, and bitter as she grows older. Her only companions were her austere and unforgiving father, Edward (Keith Carradine, "Ain't Them Bodies Saints"), a one-term Congressman, her haughty brother, Austin (Duncan Duff, "Island"), who became an attorney and lived next door with his wife Susan Gilbert (Johdi May, "Ginger and Rosa"), and her younger sister, Lavinia (Jennifer Ehle, "Little Men") who was her greatest solace. As the film opens, Emily is tagged as an outsider almost immediately. As a young student (Emma Bell, "See You in Valhalla") at the Mount Holyoke women's seminary, she stands up to the governess by declaring that she does not want either to be saved by divine Providence or forgotten by it and also speaks out for feminism, women's rights and abolitionism.

Her willingness to challenge conventional thinking by dismissing Longfellow's poem "The Song of Hiawatha" as "gruel," and her support for the poorly-regarded Bronte sisters was not appreciated by her family. "If they wanted to be wholesome," she retorted, "I imagine they would crochet." As Davies cleverly morphs the faces of Emily and her well-to-do family from children into adults, a clearer picture emerges of her relationship with her strict father and reserved mother (Joanna Bacon, "Love Actually"). Her only refuge from family conflicts and disappointments was her intimate relationship with Vinnie, the companionship of her best friend Vryling Buffam (Catherine Bailey, "The Grind"), and the sermons of Reverend Wadsworth (Eric Loren, "Red Lights"). Irreverent and provocative, Emily, Vinnie, and Vryling are shown walking through the gardens, exchanging witty aphorisms while they twirl their parasols, but the element of artifice is overbearing.

We do not see Emily in the process of composition but listen to her poems read aloud in voice-over. They are the highlight of the film, but there are not enough of them and too much time is spent on Emily's sad physical deterioration as she confronts the debilitating Bright's disease. In this regard, there is no subtlety in the film's presentation as the camera unnecessarily lingers over Emily's shaking fits for an inordinate length of time and her last days are an endurance test for the audience. In spite of the family's strong religious approach to life, there is no reflection about her life and legacy or talk about life's meaning and purpose.

Though Emily Dickinson's poetry glimmers with a spiritual glow, the uniqueness of who she is does not fully come across. For all of its fine performances and moments of comic satire, A Quiet Passion is dramatically inert, and its stilted and mannered dialogue is an emotional straitjacket with each character talking to the other as if they were reading a book of aphorisms. Terence Davies has directed some memorable period films in his career such as his remarkable adaptation of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth. A Quiet Passion, however, has neither quiet nor passion. Gratitude must be offered, however, to Davies for introducing the poems of Emily Dickinson to a wider audience. Thanks Terence and thanks Emily.

"You left me, sweet, two legacies, A legacy of love A Heavenly Father would content, Had He the offer of; You left me boundaries of pain Capacious as the sea, Between eternity and time, Your consciousness and me"

Dour

[ferdinand1932 · 5/10 · 19 July 2017]

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.

Poetry in (slow) motion

[rubenm · 7/10 · 19 November 2016]

• He's not even capable of making up his mind. - That's because he's too stupid to have one.

You'd expect this kind of witty dialogue in a Woody Allen film about condescending New York intellectuals. But 'A Quiet Passion', about 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson, is also full of it. Clearly, she used her talent not only to write poetry, but also to engage in spirited conversation.

British director Terence Davies shows Dickinson as a person who refused to stick to the strict rules of life in the Victorian era. She had a mind of her own, and was not afraid to speak out. At the same time, she seemed to have trouble finding happiness. The most tragic element of her life was that her poetry was hardly appreciated. Only a few poems were published in the local paper.

All this is subtly shown in the biopic, which follows Dickinson from her childhood to her death. The poems are read by a voice-over, which is not the easiest way to appreciate poetry. But at the same time, the poems are a necessary element to understand Dickinson as she was.

Cynthia Nixon gives a good, restrained performance. It's nice to see her in a role that's the complete opposite from the career lawyer Miranda in 'Sex and the City'.

Director Davies doesn't speed things up. The film is a calm and quiet affair, which is good because Dickinson's life itself was calm and quiet. Some scenes are beautiful just because they are unhurried: in one scene, the camera moves extremely slowly around Dickinson's living room, lingering on walls and doors as well as on the people present.

If you are acquainted with Emily Dickinson's work, this film gives an interesting insight into her life and her poetry. If you're not, this film is a great introduction to it.

Too quiet, not enough passion

[davidgee · 6/10 · 20 April 2017]

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.

A Superb Dramatization of the Life of a Great American Poet

[nicholasruddick · 10/10 · 15 October 2016]

Emily Dickinson isn't the easiest subject for a feature-length biopic. True, she is the greatest female poet in the English language, maybe even in world literature. But her life was uneventful in the extreme. She never married and probably died a virgin. Her love affairs were conducted by correspondence. She became reclusive as she got older, donning a white dress, rarely leaving home, and holding conversations through doorways. She wrote poetry—a kind of literature appealing only to a tiny minority of readers and not amenable to film adaptation. Moreover, with a few exceptions, her poems are difficult: she specialized in extreme mental states and thorny intellectual paradoxes. And she died in complete obscurity—it's only by good fortune that the 1800 poems she wrote still exist. At her death the vast majority of them existed only in a single handwritten manuscript and could easily have been consigned to flame as the ramblings of an eccentric spinster.

So Dickinson's biography hardly conforms to the typical story arc or dramatic requirements of the average American film. Until now, the most successful dramatization of the life of this poet who lived an interior existence, both literally and figuratively, was the one-woman play The Belle of Amherst, which needless to say emphasized her isolation.

Terence Davies's film knows and accepts all this, yet remembers that Dickinson in her own time was not a great poet, except perhaps only in the farthest reaches of her own imagination. Instead of a lonely genius, Davies conjures up a Dickinson who was very much a social being, even if her interactions were largely restricted to her family. Cynthia Nixon's Emily is a flawed, totally plausible, and deeply sympathetic woman of her time.

This is a brilliant film in the way it exploits the resources of the medium. The performances are universally excellent, and the dialogue is as witty as it must have been among clever Emily and her circle. Davies captures the claustrophobic interiors and repressed souls of still- Puritan mid-19th-century small-town Amherst, Massachusetts. The editing and pacing are superb, as for example in a slow 360 degree pan around the Dickinson sitting room that begins and ends on Emily's face.

But it's also brilliant in the way that it interprets Dickinson's life. How did the Civil War impact her Amherst domesticity? Why did she wear a white dress? What did she feel when her brother Austin, who lived with his wife Susan next door, started conducting an adulterous affair in her own living room? How did she feel to be dying slowly and horribly of kidney disease knowing that her poetry (her "Letter to the World" as she put it) was almost totally unread? Did the hope that she'd be appreciated by posterity reconcile her to her fate? Nixon's Emily behaves in each case as a human being would, making her predicament painful to watch. But it's strangely exhilarating too—we watch knowing that Dickinson's "Letter" has most definitely been delivered.

The film is slow-paced and developed as a series of vignettes. There's quite a lot of poetry in voice-over. At no point does it pander to 21st- century sensibilities. It will not be to the taste of the majority of the cinema-going public. Nor will many Dickinson cultists enjoy it, as they often prefer to idealize or mythologize her rather than think of her as a flesh-and-blood woman. But as a plausible biography of one of America's greatest poets, this film is nothing short of a triumph.

a quiet bore

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 3 May 2017]

"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.

An acquired taste...beautifully filmed, stilted and very depressing...

[barkingechoacrosswaves · 4/10 · 6 May 2017]

It was an act of either supreme bravery or utter cluelessness on the part of Terence Davies to make a biopic about Emily Dickinson. The "belle of Amherst" may have been a great writer, but any motion picture showing her life and work is automatically and severely challenged by her cloistered and reclusive existence. Since Dickinson hardly ever left her family's house for many years and saw very few visitors most of the time, there is almost no "motion" to portray in a film about her.

I suspect many viewers will find this film -- however beautiful to look at and however carefully wrought on the technical side -- insufferably slow and claustrophobic. One does not need to be addicted to big-budget movie chase scenes, violence and explosions to find "A Quiet Passion" trying on many levels.

One level on which the film is most trying is the almost relentless sadness and loss that pervade Emily's story. We see her genius go unrecognized and the frustration and bitterness that causes her; we see her father die; we see, even more graphically, her mother die; we see Emily's severe health problems and symptoms most graphically of all; and then we see Emily's death also. For most of the film it really is one calamity after another. The only relief amidst this dirge comes from a few comic interludes between Emily and a saucy neighbor named Vryling Buffam.

The acting is capable, although sometimes the 19th century dialogue is not well suited to the actors' temperaments. This seemed especially true in the case of Emma Bell who played the young Emily. Cynthia Nixon gives her all to the title role, even though the script does not always furnish her with the raw materials to show her delightful talent to its best advantage.

I'd really like to recommend "A Quiet Passion" because I believe very strongly in what the movie is trying to do, but my viewing experience was not what I'd hoped it would be. If you go, and I'm not exactly saying you shouldn't, it's best to know what you're getting yourself into. And now you know.

Surprisingly good

[Paul-Connell · 8/10 · 16 October 2016]

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.

Makes key points but not exactly quiet

[epaulguest · 6/10 · 17 May 2017]

Written and directed by Terence Davies, this film brings out several key points in the life of the great American poet Emily Dickinson: her growing reclusiveness, the fact she dressed in white, the small number of poems she published (in fact she wrote some 1800), her admiration for the Brontës and the major illness she contracted. In one comic scene, she scolds the local newspaper editor for changing her punctuation. This also reflects a key point because her poems are, curiously, full of capitalised initial letters and dashes.

Sadly, though, I think the film's dialogue lets it down. There are a number of epigrams which sound like a pastiche of Oscar Wilde, e.g. (quotations aren't all verbatim) 'Virtue is vice in disguise', 'Admiration is another name for envy', 'Envy is another name for admiration' and 'Contempt breeds familiarity'. Such self-conscious quips are rather distracting, except, I would say, from Dickinson's Aunt Elizabeth.

Despite its title, the film isn't exactly quiet. The characters are very talkative and Dickinson seems to be confined to her room only by her illness. Her physical deterioration is, however, really terrifying; I'd even say it's the strongest part of the film. Another strength lies in the poems that are read in voice-over. Though there aren't many, they do include 'This World is Not Conclusion', which distils her profound sense of the mystery of existence. Expressing this in the film, she displays an unorthodox view of religion which scandalises her family.

Cynthia Nixon sustains the role of Dickinson quite impressively, but Jennifer Ehle seems to me to have more charm as her sister Lavinia ('Vinny'). As Aunt Elizabeth, Annette Badland almost steals the show. It's just a pity that she's only on for a short time near the beginning.

Script is terrible, story is inaccurate, acting uneven, film tedious and sad

[Slipped_Sprocket · 3/10 · 19 November 2016]

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.

A Perfect Title

[proud_luddite · 8/10 · 27 January 2018]

The life and poetry of Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) is the subject of this biopic, portraying an early feminist who lived life on her own terms within limited situations while facing sadness and despair in her later years. Dickinson was from a prominent family (her father was a lawyer) and lived in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Writer/director Terence Davies deserves so much credit for this fine film. The first half is blessed with sharp and witty dialogue using language and repartee in a style that is rarely used in today's America. Similarly, Davies' directing style is as poetic as Dickinson's writings which are frequently recited in the background. Even when poetry is not recited, there is a poetic mood that stays throughout the film especially in the second half when the lightness of the early years have passed.

For the most part, the acting is good especially Cynthia Nixon as the adult version of Dickinson. Nixon is especially strong in the later years of despair and illness. But there are moments the actors seem ill at ease with a language that no longer exists in contemporary America. Catherine Bailey portrays a very sharp-witted, independent-minded friend of Emily and her sister. While Bailey is good in the role, some extra pizzazz could have made her a scene-stealer.

The second half is quite serious at it deals with illness, dying, and the despair of living a life that is perceived as only partly lived. One particularly moving scene involved Emily brushing off the kind attention of a sincere, handsome suitor. By the end of this scene, it was easy to feel empathy and sadness for everyone involved.

"A Quiet Passion" was like the experience of visiting a historical home that is open to the public where ropes separate visitors from the rooms. But in this case, the ropes are temporarily removed and we are allowed in as long as we keep a respectful distance. With a fine cast as well as superb lighting, costumes, and set designs, Davies does a great job in recreating a time and place long gone. Viewing this film is a very soulful experience. - dbamateurcritic

Oh how she suffered for her ArtHow she suffered for her Art-

[tm-sheehan · 7/10 · 4 August 2017]

How she suffered for her Art-

Cynthia Nixon is superb in the role portraying Emily Dickinson and Jennifer Ehle as her loving sister is tender and supportive in the role.

A bleak film written and directed by Terence Davies but I thought though at times beautiful would have been more balanced if he had shown less suffering and more of the joyful influences that inspired her poetry i doubt her life was all despair and angst, perhaps it says more about Terence Davies than Emily Dickinson. After seeing both actresses in plays on Broadway a few weeks ago it was fascinating seeing them both together acting beautifully on film..

Bleak and boring

[bbewnylorac · 3/10 · 24 June 2017]

Never has the phrase, "I suffer for my art, now it's your turn," been more apt. Cynthia Nixon is actually very good as tortured poet Emily Dickinson. It's just that the script is way too sluggish. And directory Terence Davies so slavishly wishes to depict Emily's dour, dark, indoors world, not to mention her black as pitch interior psyche, that he forgets how maudlin it comes across to the audience. Mozart's life was hardly a barrel of laughs, yet the movie Amadeus was moving and full of life. I didn't walk out of the cinema during this film, but too many scenes in A Quiet Passion involved Emily and her family sitting in a very dark room spouting earnest and meaningless dialogue, like a particularly wooden 1940s radio play. And when there were lively scenes, they mostly involved someone dying, or Emily ranting to her sister, or being nasty to a stranger. You can't accuse Davies of sugar-coating Dickinson, like some biopic directors do. And Dickinson, admittedly, does seem to be a hard subject to portray. But it's such a shame the sunny early scenes descend into wrist-slashing gloom by the end of the film. Why couldn't Davies focus on the people Emily exchanged letters with? What about showing how her poems were saved after her death? Why weren't there scenes about how generations have been inspired by her work? She may have changed lives. Instead we get a turgid parlour piece that was so dim I thought I might be going blind. I kept expecting Will Ferrell to walk in and declare it all a spoof. But no luck.

As theatrical and literary as you would expect.

[jimcheva · 6/10 · 23 April 2020]

I love Dickinson's work, but had my doubts about watching her life unfold. I'm afraid this film confirmed them. This movie feels like a play, not least in the acting which is often stilted - or declarative? - in a stagy way. The dialogue comes with quotes around it; very clever sometimes, but hardly natural. Some of the scenes are drawn out for no apparent reason. And it is way too long. There is some good use of her poetry, especially after one of the best, most nuanced sequences in which one feels the tenderness between her and her bigoted aunt in a beautifully understated way. Would that the whole film had walked such lines as well.

Arguably Davies' finest film

[MOscarbradley · 10/10 · 1 March 2017]

After the disappointment of of "Sunset Song" Terence Davies has made a storming comeback with "A Quiet Passion", though it is quietude rather than 'storming' that is most applicable. Expect nothing more or less from Davies than more of the same, of course. Davies makes slow films and "A Quiet Passion" is no different from anything else he has given us nor would we want it to be. This time his subject is the poet Emily Dickinson and this is easily one of the greatest of all period films.

Davies sketches Dickinson's life in a series of brush strokes from rebellious youth to painful death in early middle-age through a series of short, sharp conversation scenes, mostly with members of her own family together with readings from her poetry and the detail he packs into these scenes is extraordinary. He is helped in this by his brilliant cast. What we have here is an ensemble performance of the highest order; from the supporting cast it's almost impossible to single anyone out though I doubt if either Keith Carradine or Jennifer Ehle have ever been better while Cynthia Nixon is quite magnificent as Dickinson.

Nothing she has done in the past quite prepares you for this; it's an indelible performance as fine, indeed, as Gillian Anderson's in "The House of Mirth" but then Davies has always been a great director of women, going all the way back to "Distant Voices, Still Lives". Perhaps this has something to do with his sexuality, perhaps not; perhaps his being a gay man has nothing to do with anything, though one only has to look to Cukor to see a connection.

He is also a remarkably fine writer with a perfect 'ear' for dialogue regardless of the period in which his films are set. Of course, "A Quiet Passion" won't light up the sky when it comes to the box-office. This is a film for aficionados but anyone willing to embrace its multitudinous charms will be amply rewarded. Personally, I think it's a masterpiece.

a finely crafted portrait of a revered American literary icon

[CineMuseFilms · 7/10 · 28 June 2017]

Modern cinema is dominated by genre formulas so it is refreshing to find something different. A Quiet Passion (2016) offers unconventional cinematography, direction and narration in a film that often feels like an extended poem. It will not be to everyone's taste, but for those with a curiosity about the gifted melancholic Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) it is a finely crafted portrait of one of America's most revered poets.

The story unfolds within a traditional bio-pic narrative structure. We meet the young schoolgirl Emily (Emma Bell) who, from an early age, is fiercely rebellious with anyone who would impose their ideas and values upon her. Born into a prominent Puritan family in Amherst, Massachusetts, she privately indulged her passion for writing verse at a time when women were never published. After the death of a close friend, she became obsessive about mortality and her poetry darkened with angst and melancholy. The mature Emily (Cynthia Nixon) was in awe of her attractive sister and she became acutely self-conscious, developing what today might be described as depressive agoraphobia. Highly judgemental of the foibles and faults of others, she was reclusive to the point where she refused to go outside and would only talk to visitors if she was not visible to them. Despite, or perhaps because, of her complexities she wrote 1800 poems but few were published in her lifetime. Beautifully filmed with detailed period sets and costumes, this sumptuous production conveys a dark mind lightened by only by her intelligent wit.

Admiring the cinematic qualities of this film is not the same as a declaration of enjoyment. It exudes a joyless austerity through its colour palette and framing, and the use of prolonged fixed camera takes feels excessive. There are several excruciatingly slow 360 degree pans that show little more than the banality of time and the emptiness of space in Emily's lonely world. Many scene changes and time lapses have a jarring abruptness that might mimic a restless mind but are also distracting. The script of this dialogue-rich film sounds forced, with every second line intended as pithy high- brow banter, and many of the set-piece scenes are symmetrically framed to evoke the formalism of 19th century portraiture styles. Perhaps the biggest gamble taken in this film is the overlaid narration of Dickinson's verse to amplify or deepen screen moments. If you are familiar with her work then the poetry narration may add layers of meaning, but for others its density is challenging when spoken at length.

The purpose of any bio-pic is to shed light on significant people in history. For Emily Dickinson, this can only be done by entering the prism of a complex and troubled mind that found solace and expression in verse. Cynthia Nixon gives a tour-de-force performance across the wide emotional range of a creative genius trapped in a world ill-suited to her intellect and gender. The film achieves much by creatively merging its medium with its message. Its greatest achievement is to pay homage to a literary giant for audiences unfamiliar with her work.

Better a grave of Balm... than a stupendous Tomb

[Irie212 · 3/10 · 28 May 2017]

Not balm for those who admire Emily Dickinson, and far from being a stupendous celluloid tomb, "A Quiet Passion" is as dreary an entry in film biographies as I've seen since Hilary Swank sank Amelia Earhart.

The principal problem is the dialogue. Dickinson's verse is used in some scenes, and as a voice-over, but not to any particularly evocative effect since her verse, like haiku, is more for contemplation than recitation. And the rest of the dialogue is mostly preposterous. Human beings do not converse like this gang does, where every single comment is quasi-philosophical, and often delivered with tear-filled eyes.

What Part of "Prickly, Reclusive Poet" Don't You Understand?

[The_late_Buddy_Ryan · 9/10 · 22 October 2017]

Terence Davies, a director who specializes in period settings, dimly lit interiors and intimate family dramas, seems like the perfect match for his protagonist here, who rarely left the grounds of her family home (the location for the film's exterior scenes) and was known to her Amherst neighbors as "The Myth." Davies has said that Cynthia Nixon was originally cast because of her physical resemblance to the pale, red-haired poet, though her amazing subtlety as an actress and her sharp intelligence can't have done much harm.

To the evident dismay of her fans (see earlier reviews, passim), instead of the sharp-eyed nature poet or the gentle, self-mocking social satirist, Davies gives us Emily the existentialist--uncompromising, irreverent, no fan of Longfellow ("gruel!"), suspicious of the clergy (or even of the Deity Himself), preoccupied with death, bereavement and "eternity." Dickinson mavens will no doubt object to the additions and subtractions in Davies's script. There's lots of Vryling Buffham--except for the foofy name, an invented character who helps young Emily and her sister Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle) fill their days with brittle, "superficial" chatter--not so much of Thomas Wentworth Higginson and other significant figures in her life.

A more serious problem, IMHO, is that Davies's dialogue sounds pretty stagy in these early scenes, like a mashup of Jane Austen fanfic and Oscar Wilde, and even old pros like Nixon and Ehle can seem uncomfortable with their lines. As Emily's adult personality becomes more sharply defined, though, and her craving for solitude and certainty more intense, Davies is entirely in his element, and the second half of the film is totally involving.

Keith Carradine is a good left-field casting choice for the whiskery paterfamilias, Edward Dickinson, and radiant Jennifer Ehle is always welcome. Belgian singer/actress Noémie Schellens makes Mabel Loomis Todd, Emily's brother Austin's scandalous love interest, seem suitably irresistible. (Fact check: though the lovers were carrying on in a room adjoining Emily's, she and Mabel never actually set eyes on each other, or so we're told.) A bracketing scene, in which Austin's wife Susan confesses to Emily that she finds "that particular part of marriage" distasteful, is quite affecting (though also presumably invented).

The most powerful shot in the film is a poetic, purely visual expression of Dickinson's complex attitude toward love and solitude: after she rebuffs a series of visitors (including a newspaper editor who's in the doghouse for adjusting her eccentric punctuation), we watch as she's visited by a phantom lover, a time-lapse blurry apparition that mounts the staircase to seek her out in her bedroom.

Terence Davies and Cynthia Nixon bring Emily Dickinson to the screen

[gortx · 30 April 2017]

Cynthia Nixon is quite fine in this intense, if 'quietly' so, bio-pic about poet Emily Dickinson. Terence Davies makes old fashioned films (often shot ON film!). But, he's not 'old fashioned' in the way most filmmakers are. It's not just that he's an older man and has seen a lot of even older films. No, with Davies, you have the sense that he is a man born two decades too late - or, maybe two CENTURIES! He truly seems be from another age. And, that's what makes his films so remarkable. You feel as if you are watching a work that was actually made at the time they are set in.

QUIET PASSION isn't the top tier of Davies' films such as DISTANT VOICES STILL LIVES or DEEP BLUE SEA (a bit too dry), but, it's still a resonant tale. Don't expect a typical biography treatment by Davies. He's more interested in what made Dickinson tick as opposed to a reciting of known facts of her life. He doesn't fully succeed, yet it is a compelling watch. And, one with only the faintest modern take -- which is why Davies' work is so utterly unlike anyone else's (although he does use CGI!).

What I liked most about the film is it's comments on looks prejudice.

[Hellmant · 7/10 · 18 January 2018]

'A QUIET PASSION': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

Critically acclaimed biopic based on the life of legendary poet Emily Dickinson. The film stars Cynthia Nixon and Emma Bell as Dickinson, in different stages of her life, and it costars Jennifer Ehle, Keith Carradine, Duncan Duff and Joanna Bacon. The film was directed and written by Terrence Davies, and it's also one of the best reviewed movies of the year (by critics). I found parts of the film to be really interesting, and educational, but it's definitely a long and slow-paced movie.

The film details the life of Emily Dickinson from when she was a young rebellious woman (Bell), till when she was a passionate (rebellious) adult poet (Nixon). It shows her relationships with her family and friends, some of which were conservative, and others were more progressive (like her). It also shows her lack of romantic relationships with men, something she blamed on a looks bias towards her (the movie explains). It also shows her frustrations with society in general, and her battle with the illness that killed her.

What I liked most about the film is it's comments on looks prejudice, something Dickinson was extremely frustrated with (at least in the movie), and it's something that I've battled with my whole life as well. So this part of the film was really relatable to me, and educational (if it's true). I also loved her rebellious nature, and her passion for art (specifically poetry). The movie is also really slow-paced though, and it could have been edited a lot better in my opinion.

I've Been to Funerals That Were More Fun Than Sitting Through This Movie

[evanston_dad · 1/10 · 3 October 2017]

It's like Terence Davies sets out to make movies that will challenge you to stay awake through them. If I do, do I win something? Because I should.

After the mournful and glacially paced "The Deep Blue Sea," I didn't think a film could come along that would more effectively numb me into somnolence. But lo and behold, here comes "A Quiet Passion," and by the same filmmaker, no less!

"A Quiet Passion" tells the story of Emily Dickinson, who, as played by Cynthia Nixon, was about the most. miserable. person. ever. to spend time with. You know that friend who has the ability to suck the fun out of absolutely any situation? That's our Em. She'd be the girl who would join a group of friends (if she had any) at a football game and then spend the entire time complaining about the pointlessness of football. According to this biography, Dickinson was a frustrated artist who held people to unrealistically high moral standards and refused to accept the slightest weakness in anyone. This made her a riot to be around, as you can imagine, and caused her to die -- shocker!! -- alone and miserable.

The film is funereally paced, and consists of one monotonous scene after another in which Dickinson gets her knickers in a twist about one thing or another and yells at whoever happens to be in the room with her. You might think so much yelling might at least give the film an ounce of energy, but you would be wrong. I've never been so excited in a movie to see a main character start exhibiting symptoms of a mysterious disease, because I knew then that it wouldn't be long before she died and the movie would be over.

All I can say is thank God for the lovely Jennifer Ehle, who plays Dickinson's sister as a human being you might want to actually have a conversation with without wanting to stab her or yourself in the eye with the butter knife.

Grade: F

about as funny as Bergman's Cries and Whispers for the last third, but also mostly a brilliant work of art

[Quinoa1984 · 9/10 · 23 May 2017]

I think if you're at the least an English major or minor in college, as I was, you're bound to come across the poetry of Emily Dickinson in a class or two. Her work is profound and terribly moving, as words flow out in such a way that you can feel the depths of feeling stretching through a nervous system that may have only just been wracked by fits and that the questioning of what GOD is or what LIFE and DEATH are have no choice but to be sussed out. There are also love poems too, or at least poems sorting out what those feelings might amount to, or what it means to be at the foot of the stairs looking at someone and not being able to, or feeling like, or whatever, going down. There's a lot of the pain, but also the joy and reverie, in connection or those possibilities in her work.

The question then for Terence Davies is: what about the woman? There is some joy here, or even small chirpings of humor in that reserved 19th century comedy-of-manners way at times in the first two-thirds... and then the last third is among the saddest things I've seen unfold in a very long time. What makes A Quiet Passion convincing is that Davies and his crew and cast commit to it all, and his style is one of patience with his compositions and movements of the frame - let's take a little time moving across faces, for example, listening to a piece of music, or let's make sure we don't too much when we can see the sum total of emotions an actor is expressing in listening (or, as a character may do that's not Dickinson at times, only half listen, or hear what they want to hear, as was the reserved 19th century small town way).

There's also a truly amazing moment of cinema here that stands out like to the point of that phrase "it's a moving painting, man!" There's one sequence where Emily is by herself in her room, as she often is, but imagining in a moment of what the title might suggest in pure, dream-like form, put to a piece of orchestral/sung music, I can't remember which now but it is full of wanting and yet sorrow somewhere in its chords and vocals. At first we see her surrounded by darkness as Davies' camera pushes in slowly on her. Then it dissolves so seamlessly that it might as well be pushing in to dolly into her brain, and then we get a shot of a door opening as a figure is standing in silhouette, total black, with the background behind him just lit enough so that it has the color of what one might see in a 19th century watercolor painting. The figure then moves slowly, like a ghost only more naturally, and then a shot of him ascending the stairs, and then finally back to Dickinson in her room as the camera pans back. God, that is astonishing cinema!

There's a good deal of this film that may be... full of talk for people. Oddly enough I think if it were a foreign language film, one with English subtitles for the art-houses where this is programmed largely (if this ever plays in a cineplex I'll expect Fate of the Furious at the Angelika soon enough), it might have come off in a way that isn't... hard to get into at first. Characters talk how they should for the period, which is fine, and yet for those first ten or so minutes you have to adjust to the cadences and how people enunciate certain words. But once Cynthia Nixon comes in as Dickinson - there's a wonderful moment where, through how digital technology can work in a surprising way, we see the characters age before our very eyes posing for photos - things pick up and she has an especially good grasp of the character and the clothes and world she's in. Matter of fact, Cynthia Nixon is wildly good - she is so impressive throughout this film that I almost wish Davies didn't have to cut away from her face to show reaction shots of the other actors (and she certainly has great players to work off from like Jennifer Ehle and Keith Carradine as a stern father).

It's in the last third that things become so raw that one may almost feel so uncomfortable and disturbed sitting there in the theater or at home (but the theater makes it larger and more direct in its effect). Dickinson, as some may know (it's what she's mostly known for, it's what I knew vaguely about her before going in, thankfully the movie showed much more as a carefully constructed biopic should), died at 56, but some may think she died of suicide. Nope - as Dickinson was likely ahead of her time in some respects as a feminist thinker and as someone questioning one's relationship with God and religion, she was a product of her times as far as medical science; one wonders if she could've been treated or even cured of her kidney disease, but whatever the case it crippled her, though before this she still rarely left her room (her father's death, I think the film subtly suggests, wrecked her in some way she couldn't fully comprehend), and the last stretch of the film we see this lovely, often happy woman become wretched and depressed and unable to control how she talks and feels... and might we be in that same position? A Quiet Passion is a soulful, deeply moving experience in artistic cinema; one may also say it's "important" feeling about it, but why carp? If it's like eating your vegetables in a sense, what if I sometimes like a heaping plate of broccoli or cauliflower? 9.5/10

words and passion

[ferguson-6 · 7/10 · 17 May 2017]

Greetings again from the darkness. We open on a young woman standing strong during a critical moment at seminary school. It's kind of a clunky start in an overly-dramatic and stagey sense for the film, but Emma Bell sets the standard for the future behavior of Emily Dickinson. What follows is a period drama with minimal costuming effects, but rather a fitting onslaught of language and words – most of which comes courtesy of Ms. Dickinson and her mighty pen.

I've often viewed Emily Dickinson as an early feminist whose beliefs and intentions were stifled by the era in which lived, as well as the depression that seemed to cloak most of her days. She was definitely an odd/unusual person and clearly stood for women's equality at a time when her own poems were published anonymously to avoid scandal and backlash for the paper. Writer/director Terence Davies (The Deep Blue Sea, 2011) shows interest in glamorizing neither the times nor the writer, and Cynthia Nixon seizes the opportunity to capture the essence of a gifted woman who at best, could be described as a societal misfit and a genius.

The terrific cast also includes Keith Carradine as Emily's proud father, Jennifer Ehle as her (yin-yang) sister Vinnie, and Duncan Duff as brother Austin. Emily's rare forays beyond familial boundaries are mostly via garden strolls with her wise-cracking friend Miss Buffum, played with zeal by Catherine Bailey. There is also a tremendous 3:00am scene between Emily and her sister-in-law Susan (Jodhi May), which provides the best possible self-analysis by Ms. Dickinson (outside of her writings). She confesses to her new family member, "You have a life, I have a routine." This insightful line seems to carry no sadness for Emily.

The first third of the film features some low-key zingers that rival anything from Whit Stillman's superb Love & Friendship, though the balance of the film takes a turn towards the serious and somber while focusing more on Faith and Death and Emily's controversial stances. She embraces the label of "no-hoper" and continues on with her observations of a life she barely leads. While the language and words are the stars here (along with Ms. Nixon), there is a very cool effect as the characters seamlessly age before our eyes in a series of portrait poses, vaulting the timeline headfirst into Emily's descent into self-imposed isolation. It's a very well done biopic that requires your ears be in prime form.

Ms. Dickinson died in 1866 at the age of 55, and the film helps us understand that the contradictions and confusion associated with religion does not solely belong to our modern times. This might best be explained when Emily's aunt wins an argument by proclaiming that "hymns aren't music". Mr. Davies delivers a small film that is large in thought and beautiful in look.

Awk-ward di-a-logue

[lizzyispink · 2/10 · 24 November 2022]

Not a single actor delivered dialogue naturally. Every character spoke in an oddly stiff and wooden manner. They all sounded like non-Americans, often non English speakers, trying (without any real desire) to sound American. It was like a bad SNL skit poking fun at the rigid, stodgy formality of the Victorian era. Utterly unwatchable. Not sure if it was the actors, the direction or the dialog, probably a combination of all. It was as if there was absolutely no direction and the first take was used- no editing or reshoots art all. Two stars for the attention to detail in the costumes, sets and hair/makeup.

a bitter poet

[cdcrb · 6/10 · 3 September 2017]

although most of the reviews are the same, I must point out the performance by Cynthia Nixon, as Emily Dickenson. it's spell binding and frightening at the same time. ms. Nixon is at the top of her game here and provides us with a character only bette davis could have delivered in the day. see this film for her. otherwise, it's hard going and quite down. not much reason to plunk down big bucks at the box office.