Emily
Dickinson at Mt. Holyoke College, 1846
A QUIET PASSION B
Great Britain
Belgium (125 mi) 2017
‘Scope d: Terence Davies Official
site [Japan]
Poems are my solace
for the eternity which surrounds us all.
—Emily Dickinson (Cynthia Nixon)
No one can deny this director’s reverence for American poet
Emily Dickinson, as he’s spoken out in praise of her for at least a decade or
more, calling her America’s greatest poet, describing her as a “genius,” though
the same could probably be said for her contemporary Walt Whitman, so there’s
no surprise that the film elevates the material into sacred realms, where it
comes across as an extended dedication and eulogy of her life. Solemn to the core, the film is a vivid
memorialization of her life, showing in the opening scene how women were bullied
and manipulated, forced to endure their place in life while constantly
criticized for not being happy about it.
Dickinson is that rare individual who takes her soul seriously, “My soul
is my own,” she insists, yet refuses to be pushed one way or another, by
pastors, college matrons, or even her father, who seem to think they know
what’s best for her. Throughout her
life, she questions whether they do, taking individual stock in herself,
valuing her own intelligence and opinion, even if it stands contrary to the prevailing
view. What perhaps stands out in this
film version is just how artificially self-conscious and unlike real life it
seems, as it has a theatrical dimension throughout that may feel overly
scripted, yet it’s simply attempting to recreate a more formal 19th century American
English when people spoke differently, as they were still trying to emulate the
British, where conversations sound like recitations, with the use of perfect
diction and proper pitch in every scrutinized line. While this doesn’t appear to be an accident, but
instead a chosen aesthetic, reminiscent of Sally Potter’s film YES (2004) that
was written in iambic pentameter. While
it’s not that artistically stylized, resorting to the language of Shakespeare,
it does suggest an uncompromising aspect to her nature, where Emily defiantly
chooses her own path, even if that means disagreements with people of
authority. In the opening scene, a
younger Emily (Emma Bell) receives a stern dressing down from one of the overly
pious headmistresses at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, where she is
labelled a “no-hoper,” as she refuses to whole-heartedly embrace divine
Providence and instead chooses an alternative path, knowing full well that
women could not aspire to happiness, but were instead forced to submit to the
laws of men, believing it’s far more important to lead a good life under the
watchful eyes of God. This evangelical drive
for religious conformity, which amounts to little more than female servitude, causes
her great distress, eventually driving her out of school, returning to a life
at home where she is completely embraced by her family, where with her father’s
permission, she is allowed time alone in the early morning hours to write. Mostly taking place out of sight from everyone
else, her poems offer a window into her soul, where no one in her lifetime could
imagine the extent of her productivity, as she was a prolific writer, totaling
nearly 1800 poems, yet only a handful were printed during her lifetime, as
women were not recognized as having the same artistic stature as men, a view
that didn’t change until the latter half of the 20th century. Dickinson’s first volume of poetry was
published four years after her death, but in an altered form, as publishers attempted
to simplify what they believed to be a more correct language. It wasn’t until 1955 that a complete and
unabridged anthology of her work was published.
Raised in a Puritan era in the New England town of Amherst,
Massachusetts (though shot near Antwerp, Belgium), Emily stayed with her family
her entire life, feeling love and satisfaction in the comfort of family and
home, seldom leaving home, having few friends, receiving only occasional
guests, where she led a reclusive and contemplative life. In one extraordinary interior shot, as the
camera glides across the room, the countenance of Emily’s character morphs into
another actress, Cynthia Nixon, which is done so well the audience feels like
bursting into applause, viewed with a fierce intelligence and a strong
determination, with the film balancing her spoken thoughts with an interior
voice-over that reads bits and pieces of her poems out loud. Again, there is a blatant artificiality with
this aesthetic choice that doesn’t make it easy on the viewers, allowing the
changing moods to shift and feel discombobulated, growing overly dramatic to
the point of melodrama, a device that keeps viewers off-kilter, where the
director’s uncompromising vision is a difficult film to watch. Yet early on one is struck by her brilliance,
as she is used to being the smartest person in the room, but not always happy
about it, knowing that marriage would suffocate her creativity, instead
guarding her fierce independence, yet feeling great disappointment in her
self-imposed isolation, as it prevents her from having a larger social
impact. Her tender yet austere father is
played by a nearly unrecognizable Keith Carradine, not seen by this viewer
since the Alan Rudolph films, CHOOSE ME (1984 ), TROUBLE IN MIND (1985), and
THE MODERNS (1988), and prior to that Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975),
given heightened presence by being a one-time Congressman, where he is viewed
throughout as a man of intellect and respect.
Her older brother Austin (Duncan Duff) joins his father’s law firm while
living next door with his wife Susan, Johdi May, still the youngest recipient
of the Best Actress Award at Cannes for the film A WORLD APART (1988), though
Jennifer Ehle as her younger sister Lavinia (Vinnie) is one of the film’s
revelations, as she is her sister’s equal in every respect, with no one any
closer to Emily or knowing her any better.
She is like Emily’s alter-ego, balancing her mood swings while providing
the social grace and dignity that Emily often eschews. Their love of the Brontë sisters is
unsurpassed in a time when their writing was poorly regarded, while Emily is
openly dismissive of Longfellow’s epic poem The
Song of Hiawatha, calling it “gruel.”
Her outspokenness in challenging conventional thinking is legendary in
this corner of the world, where her reputation is challenged from time to time,
but few provide the outward joie de vivre of her best friend, Vryling Buffam,
Catherine Bailey, probably an invention of Davies’ imagination, whose energy
and enthusiasm is infectious, stealing every scene she’s in with a kind of
offbeat, Helena Bonham Carter, acerbic charm.
Many of their scenes together take place while dressed to the hilt,
walking the grounds of the house while twirling parasols, as if plucked from a
19th century French impressionist painting.
Their joyous back and forth wit and banter could easily be the
centerpiece of the film, much of it intentionally exaggerated and humorous, but
instead it represents a kind of utopian hope that sadly never materializes.
There are distinctly original sequences sprinkled throughout
this chamber drama, filmed by German cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, who
also filmed The Deep
Blue Sea (2012), though none stand out more than the Dickinson family
posing for daguerreotypes, with the cameraman begging the father to smile, causing him to shout
out “I’m smiling!” but his countenance never changes, until each one slowly
seems to age right before our eyes, revealing a kind of Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray effect, which
is an extraordinary way to express time passing. With friends and family suddenly abandoning
her, including a slowly agonizing death of her bedridden mother, which only increased
Emily’s domestic responsibilities, while losing her friend Vryling, who decided
to settle for the compromise of marriage, where her departure is like the end
of all youthful ideals suddenly disappearing into thin air, with Emily suppressing
all romantic notions, confining herself more in her home, self-exiled to her
bedroom, often never even venturing downstairs, a habit she shared with her
mother. Although brief, Davies does
include a profoundly effective Civil War montage of still images, a period
coinciding with her most creative output (composing more than 600 poems in just
four years), showing bodies strewn on a battlefield, with tattered flags from
each side still standing, as battlefield statistics are given for several of
the bloodiest altercations. When her
father suffers a fatal heart attack, the film turns ominous, where Death
itself, the personification of fleeting hopes, becomes a central character in
the final third of the film, as Emily is so effected by it. Few directors express the physical agony of
brutality as well as Davies, whose earlier film, 2016 Top
Ten List #7 Sunset Song, left no mistaking the grueling harshness for women
in his portrait of Scottish life dominated by men leading up to WWI, where
women suffer in silent perpetuity. As
Emily grows bitterer and more socially aloof through the years, never marrying,
though carrying on long distance written correspondences, she also grows more
despondent, reclusive, and lonely, dressing herself all in white, not even
allowing visitors to see her, strangely speaking from behind doors or up
staircases. Still, it’s a shock to
witness the ferocity of the seizures that accompany her affliction with
Bright’s disease, a particularly debilitating kidney ailment that precipitates
a long physical deterioration.
Unfortunately, too much time is spent with the overwhelming depression
and despair associated with this lingering malady, showing a deference for profound
melodramatic suffering, where the family drifts into an inert claustrophobic dysfunction,
suddenly aware that they failed to live up to their earlier hopes and
ambitions, where there’s nothing left to do about it. Still, the gentle and forgiving kindness
expressed by her sister Vinnie takes the sting out of Emily’s disappointment
with her brother’s blatant moral failings, pleading “We’re only human,
Emily. Don’t pillory us for that,” salvaging
what’s left of family devotion, though he tries her patience, having the last word
by cruelly reading a newspaper article with one of Emily’s publishers
minimizing the worth of female writers, declaring them sad and unhappy
creatures writing literature of misery, filled with too much hopelessness and
despair that blinds them through their tears, a strikingly arrogant and
inaccurate assessment of the time, yet a typically male view that unfortunately
prevailed for the next hundred years, which has the effect of freezing this disgraced
imprint not only onto their deteriorating family relations, but to the surrounding
cultural world at large. In one of the
more surreal scenes, Emily is visited by a faceless visitor, as if in a dream,
who may be the presence of Death, but disappears as quickly as he came. By the time Death arrives, it is accompanied
by readings of her most recognized poem, Because I could not stop for Death,
first published in 1862, cleverly narrating her own funeral, where the cosmic
music of Charles Ives, Charles
Ives - The Unanswered Question - YouTube (6:07), plays out over the end
credits.
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