Film Review: A Quiet Passion is well done, surprisingly so since the life of a poet, especially Emily Dickinson's, is almost impossible to turn into a film. As such, the writer/director has freely imagined many elements of Dickinson's biography. This is Terence Davies' version of, interpretation of, vision of the great poet. Since he willingly deviates from telling the truth of her life, it makes me wonder whose life he was actually telling about. But in a larger sense we get in A Quiet Passion a film that may be true to the spirit, if not the letter, of Dickinson's life. His fabrication is only troubling because so many Americans get their history lessons from the movies. Davies' Dickinson lives for home, music, faith, family, and of course, poetry. She is strong willed, angry, proud, feminist, short tempered, sharp witted, and something of a smart-ass. There is conflict, rage, sorrow, hypocrisy, loneliness, and the immortal poems.
Dickinson the poet turned her gaze within, ever deeper, ever smaller, to the interior of the atom, and there she discovered a whole universe in the circumscribed realm of her life. Contrasted to her contemporary, Walt Whitman, who orating as an Old Testament prophet tried to envision the largest possible picture of America, and found small moments of the personal and private. A significant part of the film's success is Cynthia Nixon's nuanced, strong, and sensitive performance in the lead role (she makes the viewer forget there was ever a Sex and the City). Nixon reads the poems well, no easy task (having the words simultaneously on screen would be even better). One of the director's decisions has to be questioned. Davies largely invents a friend for Dickinson, a female Oscar Wilde whose recited epigrams and banter outshine Dickinson every moment they share the screen. Why? Presumably much of the film was inspired by Dickinson's letters, but no small part is fictionalized. A Quiet Passion is enjoyable, well worth watching, a strong contribution to the too little noted memory of Emily Dickinson. 🐢
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