A Quiet Passion

Writer-director Terence Davies brings his idiosyncratic poetic sensibility to the life of Emily Dickinson in a film that is mannered and extremely deliberate, albeit presented in the form of a conventional biography. A Quiet Passion begins with the young Dickinson's expulsion from Mount Holyoke for her unorthodox religious views and the story continues through the decades that she spent in her father's Amherst home, including the years in which she declined to leave the grounds at all. Cynthia Nixon as Dickinson and Jennifer Ehle as her supportive sister are excellent, coping with the deaths of their father (Keith Carradine) and mother (Joanna Bacon) and marital infidelity on the part of their brother (Duncan Duff). Emily's hostility to the prim morality and male-centric bias of her age is a major motif, expressed primarily through a speculative portrayal of a friendship with an aphorism-spouting teacher (Catherine Bailey) who sounds as if she could have stepped out of a play by Oscar Wilde. The core of the film, however, is Dickinson's verse, for which she gained recognition only after death, as well as Dickinson's hopeless relationship with a married minister who was one of the few to appreciate her poems. A richly textured character study of a premier American poet, this is highly recommended. [Note: DVD extras include a Q&A with director Terence Davies and star Cynthia Nixon (23 min.), an interview with Nixon (16 min.), a behind-the-scenes featurette (14 min.), “Emily Dickinson Poems, Recited” (6 min.), and a booklet featuring an essay by author Michael Koresky. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a fine bio-pic.] (F. Swietek)