This is a review of A Quiet Passion (2016)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
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12 March
This is a review of A Quiet Passion (2016)
So, indeed, A Quiet Passion (2016) has done – though it was good, at the time of viewing (and before much fatigue set on), to provide the Twitter accounts for the film and for its executive producers [@aquietpassion, @Gibson_MacLeod] some things that the account-holders were kind enough to Retweet !
As with John Keats, about whose love affair with Fanny Brawne Bright Star (2009) was wonderfully made by Jane Campion¹, Emily Dickinson’s poetry was very little recognized in her life-time (1830–1886²) : Keats, alive for less than half that span (1795-1821), did manage to publish, but was met with savaging reviews, whereas – to judge by Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion (2016) – Dickinson looked, with limited success, to a newspaper (The Springfield Republican), in terms both of which poems / how many were accepted for publication, and how little her style of punctuation was respected.
Penguin Books published a source-book for the film, in Bright Star : Love Letter and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne (London, 2009) – one could wish for the sound-track album to have a bonus disc of Cynthia Nixon’s readings of Emily Dickinson's verse… !
Rivalling her aunt for ambitions to be recognized a poet, and to know in what good poetry consists, so arises Emily’s equivocal compliment to her aunt Elizabeth (Annette Badland), her response to being questioned about which heads this review : something about Dickinson’s conscience – although she has also been mercilessly and laughingly critical to her sister and ally Vinnie (Lavinia) – will not allow her to do more (or less) than wish her aunt’s poems the reception that they deserve. (As we watch, we, of course, know that it is Dickinson’s reputation that has lived on and grown – even if it does so partly on the basis of anecdotally being aware of her individual approach to punctuation and syntax, which Cynthia Nixon’s excellent reading of her texts dispels.)
Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne in Bright Star (2009) [though the blossoms and blooms, which are beautifully necessary to the film, can be more readily seen in the trailer]
Even so, ‘the independence’ – as she puts it – that Emily Dickinson requires for her soul is what, in particular, leads her into various confrontations, including with her father, because, as we see at the start of the film (as considered below), she defies all tactics that would bully or coerce her into Christian belief : not, however, because she rejects it, but because she tries to be scrupulously honest with herself about her difficulties. (Helping her see herself in a more kind light, and also helping her see others (such as their brother Austin) differently, Davies shows us Emily’s sister playing a dual role towards her.)
The following exchange could have been taken from – and would not have been out of place in – Children (1976), say, or Of Time and the City (2008), because Terence Davies’ concerns and fascinations in life have been abiding :
Do you wish to come to God and be saved ?
I have no sense of my sins – and how can I ?
The words come from the opening moments of A Quiet Passion, when Emma Bell plays Dickinson (at Mount Holyoke ?), asserting herself - always an attraction to Davies, as a champion of independent minds (as it was with Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn) in Sunset Song (2015).) In interview with Anne-Katrin Titze (‘Terence Davies on innocence, sin, half smiles and A Quiet Passion’), Davies questions the doctrine of original sin (arguing for the lack of any basis for it in The New Testament) in relation to Emily’s attitude.
Emma Bell (Emily, when younger)
Terence Davies has a strong feeling for the frailties and failings of the human heart, and – not in an anachronistic way – shows us moments pregnant with emotion. So, in the theatre, when Dickinson has been brought home by her family, and they are spending time with her aunt Elizabeth, he carefully has the motion of the camera swivel up to where they are sitting, but not detract from the moments when Emily dares speak to challenge her father’s disapproval of a woman being a vocalist, before it moves away again.
End-notes :
¹ With Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw, respectively :
² Emily Dickinson is buried in Wildwood Cemetery, Amherst, MA.
³ Who confesses something to the effect that she sounds like an anagram !
Vryling (Catherine Bailey) and Emily (Cynthia Nixon)
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
