A Quiet Passion

 

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.  

Métamorphoses

Director Christophe Honoré

MÉTAMORPHOSES             D+                  

France  (102 mi)  2014 ‘Scope  d:  Christophe Honoré

Oh how the mighty have fallen.  Honoré was a regular contributor to Cahiers du Cinéma and an established novelist before breaking into the ranks of filmmakers like a breath of fresh air with his first feature, Seventeen Times Cécile Cassard (Dix-sept fois Cécile Cassard) (2002), a radically inventive director working with some of the best actors and actresses in France, including Béatrice Dalle in his first feature, Isabelle Huppert in an unconventional incestial sex drama in MA MÈRE (2004), Romain Duris and Louis Garrel in a love letter to the French New Wave in DANS PARIS (2006), Ludivine Sagnier and Louis Garrel in a ménage à trois musical in LOVE SONGS (2007), turning actress Léa Seydoux into a breakout star in his Sirkian youth melodrama LA BELLE PERSONNE (2008), even reuniting the mother and daughter team of Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni in Beloved (Les Bien-Aimés) (2011).  Often wrenchingly dramatic, providing meticulous, novelesque detail while exploring the depths of human anguish, yet characters could just as easily break out into song, one had to wonder what couldn’t this guy do?  But with his ninth feature he’s plummeted to the bottom of the food chain with this pathetic attempt to set Greek myths into the modern era youth of the Parisian banlieues, in most cases featuring non-professionals or first time performers.  While he’s always integrated love and sex into the modern landscape as an intricate aspect of contemporary French culture, this full-blown retelling of Ovid’s myths is a misfire of gigantic proportions, lacking depth, emotional range, psychological intrigue, and artistic merit, basically all the aspects he excelled in with his earlier works, where sadly much of this resembles the prettified artificiality of a perfume commercial.  One must attribute full responsibility to the director, as this is his project, adapting Ovid’s work himself, so the purely amateurish artistic ineptitude belongs to him in failing to breathe any life into this ultimately dull and uninspired affair.  It pales in comparison to Rohmer’s last work,  The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon) (2007), a similar project that spent next to nothing on actors or production design, basically filmed in the French countryside, but Rohmer’s painterly detail and lush emotionalism brings the archaic language to life, finding fresh inspiration in a 5th century idealized love play of nymphs and shepherds frolicking in the forests before a 21st century audience with modern sensibilities, all the more remarkable considering he was 87 years of age when he created such an exquisitely youthful vision.  Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Honoré. 

Unfolding in three chapters, the story is told largely through the curious eyes of Europa (Amira Akili), a disinterested teenage high school student who skips class and by chance runs into Jupiter (Sébastien Hirel), an aloof yet arrogant and boastful man who immediately captures her attention by promising he would change her life, typical male bravado, but he lures her into a world of mythical gods that have supernatural powers, including the ability to transform humans into animals, often on a frivolous whim out of jealous vengeance.  After having sex on a forested slope, he starts telling her longwinded stories that suddenly spring to life, like a flashback within a flashback, with both submerged into the narrative.  What we quickly discover is the pettiness and overtly sexist behavior of these mythical gods, constantly squabbling among themselves, unable to control their volatile tempers and unquenchable desires, apparently, where they roam from partner to partner, creating jealous animosity wherever they roam, always looking young, never aging, where they remain forever immortal.  But they easily tire of one another, instead taking pleasure in toying with the mortal humans, a subspecies they can so easily control.  With an apparent lust for power and pleasure, often seen wandering naked in the woods, they show no aptitude for changing their ways.  While not overly impressed, Europa has a pathetically distressing home life in the projects with a callously disinterested father she’s not eager to return to, so she’s hoping to discover something better, which explains why she puts up with the conceited antics of Jupiter and the petulant gods, who seem besmitten by their own vanity, but she’s hoping it might lead her somewhere.  The two of them wander into town encountering an old man, who invites them into his home, where he and his aging wife offer them whatever they have, which isn’t much.  Out of gratitude, Jupiter turns their table into a banquet of feasts before walking the old couple out into the forests, promising to grant a wish in return for their hospitality.  Their biggest fear would be to die alone, believing it would cause the surviving partner untold heartache, so they wished they could die together.  Jupiter turned them into trees sitting side by side on the riverbank, each basking in the beauty of the other.  Caught up in the moment, the young lovers have sex before Europa falls asleep on one of the tree branches, while Jupiter wanders off to create more mischief somewhere else, leaving Europa stranded on her own when she awakens.  As she wanders through the forest, basically watching and listening, the film turns into a road movie where Europa becomes acquainted with Jupiter’s extended family and friends, including Bacchus (Damien Chapelle), one of his many sons, who’s just as big a braggart as his father, but more devlish, and later Orpheus (George Babluani). 

Bacchus forcefully kidnaps a few girls, actually commandeering them into a truck at gunpoint, soon to become naked women of the wilds prowling the rocks and riverbanks like a vigilante death squad, the Bacchantes, before introducing Europa to the story of Hermaphroditus (Julien Antonini), a young man seen birdwatching, minding his own business, until Salmacis, a large-sized, extremely forward woman (Marlene Saldana) starts pestering him, eventually stripping naked, asking if he likes what he sees, suggesting they go swimming in the river.  But when he hesitates, Salmacis mocks him before disappearing from sight.  Curious, Hermaphroditus jumps into the water, where Salmacis suddenly reappears, twisting her body around his, calling out to the gods that they should never leave one another, as both disappear underwater.  Afterwards, when Hermaphroditus steps out of the river, he’s astonished to discover he’s half man, half woman.  Europa eventually forgoes Bacchus and wanders off with a prophetic Orpheus and his sad group of disciple followers, apparently becoming transformed by the accumulating personal associations with beauty, sex, violence, hardship, and death that surround her, eventually jumping naked into a river, assuming a new identity, spirit, and soul.  While mythical tales have an imaginary power all their own, something is lost in the translation to the screen, given a modern era context, where the gods and mortals are all high school students living in the projects, each one indistinguishable from the other, as the real and mythical worlds look exactly the same, with little hint of illusion or magic, where any dramatic production of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream will likely produce more artistry and imagination.  None of these characters generate any connection to the mythical parts they’re playing, no rush of emotion, no sense of exhilaration, where there’s little identification with the ideas and themes they represent.   In the case of Narcissus (Arthur Jacquin), who falls in love with his own reflection, he’s a handsome kid, and the other high school girls swoon at the sight of him, but he’s otherwise completely indifferent, a disaffected skater kid in the projects, yet representative of the entire cast, where an overall sense of detachment suffocates this picture.  While Honoré balances his mythical storylines with classical music pieces written on similar themes, this feels all too simplistic, like painting by numbers, where the entire effort falls under the weight of its own pretentiousness.  Whatever the idea was behind this project to mix carefree youth with the casual exploits of the mythical Greek characters just never generates any meaningful interest or dialogue, instead feeling like everyone got sidetracked and lost interest along the way.  Much like the myths, movies have a transformative power, but in the end, this is to Honoré what Song to Song is to Malick, ideas that simply failed to come to fruition, in each case, the first real disappointment in the director’s otherwise extraordinary output.