A Quiet Passion – first look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

A Qui­et Pas­sion – first look review

14 Feb 2016

Words by Adam Woodward

Two women in period costumes, one holding a colourful fan, smiling and chatting in a richly decorated room.
Two women in period costumes, one holding a colourful fan, smiling and chatting in a richly decorated room.
A stun­ning per­for­mance from Cyn­thia Nixon anchors Ter­ence Davies’ unro­man­tic por­trait of reclu­sive Amer­i­can poet Emi­ly Dickinson.

Ter­ence Davies makes beau­ti­ful films about tor­tured souls, and there is no one more trag­ic in the writer/director’s body of work than the great Amer­i­can poet Emi­ly Dick­in­son. Though today she is gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as one of the finest writ­ers of her gen­er­a­tion, Dick­in­son only achieved wider pub­lic recog­ni­tion posthu­mous­ly when the first of 40 bound vol­umes of her work was pub­lished in 1890, four years after her death. Like so many trou­bled artists, her cre­ativ­i­ty stemmed from a chron­ic suf­fer­ing brought on by a com­bi­na­tion of self-loathing and a rejec­tion of tra­di­tion­al gen­der roles.

Through­out this ten­der if uneven biopic, Davies sep­a­rates the woman from the myth. We learn that she led a large­ly sequestered life, shut­ting her­self off from the out­side world after falling into a black hole of despair fol­low­ing a string of deaths in the fam­i­ly. Out­ward­ly she was a pro­to-fem­i­nist fire­brand who chal­lenged every­day reli­gious and social val­ues freely and exer­cised her sharp tongue when­ev­er the mood took her. Yet her strong, forth­right per­son­al­i­ty masked a bruised psyche.

Embit­tered by a life­time of lone­li­ness, she became a recluse and even­tu­al­ly fell grave­ly ill, suc­cumb­ing to Bright’s dis­ease at the age of 55. Dur­ing her fair­ly short and unhap­py life, Dick­in­son found solace in words, pen­ning poems by can­dle­light while the world slept. Secret­ly she dreamt of emu­lat­ing the suc­cess of her transat­lantic con­tem­po­raries Jane Austen, Eliz­a­beth Bar­rett Brown­ing and the Bron­të sisters.

We meet a young Dick­in­son (Emma Bell) on the day she decides to cast off the shack­les of her evan­gel­i­cal upbring­ing, much to the dis­may of her strict Puri­tan teacher and affec­tion­ate but con­ser­v­a­tive father, Edward (Kei­th Car­ra­dine). From here the film charts Emily’s life back on the fam­i­ly estate in Amherst, Mass­a­chu­setts with her sis­ter Vin­nie (Jen­nifer Ehle) and broth­er Austin (Dun­can Duff), through to her wilder­ness years as the woman in white”, her pale, stiff cot­ton dress­es and som­bre demeanour lend­ing her an almost ghost­ly air.

Owing to Davies’ dia­logue-heavy script – through­out which Dickinson’s prose rever­ber­ates in serene voiceover – pas­sion is the oper­a­tive word here. The metic­u­lous peri­od pro­duc­tion design (prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy was com­plet­ed in Bel­gium on a repli­ca set of the Dick­in­son Home­stead), cos­tume design and sparse but effec­tive score all enhance Davies’ com­pelling vision. Of course, any bio­graph­i­cal film is only as good as its lead actor, and in that respect Cyn­thia Nixon deserves huge cred­it for her com­mit­ted, spir­it­ed cen­tral turn. This is a role that demands both grace and strength, inno­cence and dark­ness, and Nixon’s per­for­mance, espe­cial­ly in sev­er­al dis­tress­ing scenes where her char­ac­ter suf­fers vio­lent con­vul­sions, is exceptional.

Watch­ing Dickinson’s men­tal and phys­i­cal dete­ri­o­ra­tion unfold, it is easy to find sym­pa­thy for her. And yet in some ways A Qui­et Pas­sion is a dif­fi­cult film to love. Part of the rea­son is that Dickinson’s genius was rarely as forth­com­ing as her wit. Lat­er in life she became not only anti­so­cial but increas­ing­ly dis­mis­sive of peo­ple out­side of her pri­vate (and rel­a­tive­ly priv­i­leged) New Eng­land bub­ble. Accord­ing­ly Davies often por­trays her as bel­liger­ent and spite­ful, which if noth­ing else enhances the authen­tic­i­ty of what is a deeply sin­cere and at times bru­tal­ly hon­est film.

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