'A Quiet Passion'

In cinemas April 7th!

Not knowing what’s to come is intriguing. Suspense is the lifeblood of a good story. I love walking into the cinema not knowing anything about the film I’m about to watch. It doesn’t happen often, hardly ever if I’m totally honest. Trailers nowadays spoil most of the plot points. It is such a different experience viewing a film without any preconceived notions. So I was really excited sitting down for 'A Quiet Passion' in a cosy little cinema just off Oxford Street.
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The film is a period drama, not my favourite genre. A biopic, even worse. About the life of Emily Dickinson, a poet! I chuckle to myself, remembering my experience with another poetry film, 'Paterson', a few weeks ago, and readying myself for a lengthy two hours. Within a few minutes the film has me truly chuckling at the snappy performances and witty dialogue firing left and right. The Dickinson family has you engaged from the first moment.

This is where the film shows its strengths. The performances are brilliant and Director Terence Davies’ script is solid. Cynthia Nixon does a marvellous job as Emily Dickinson, portraying a woman at odds with the world around her, later succumbing to Bright’s disease which sees her go through sudden violent spasms, among other things. I didn’t know anything about the disease so the physicality of this role surprised me and I cannot say if the depiction is correct or not, but it had a profound impact on the entire audience.

Jennifer Ehle and Duncan Duff play Emily’s siblings Vinnie and Austin, and it is with them that Nixon has some of the most memorable scenes. Especially Ehle, who’s Vinnie plays the perfect counterweight to Nixon’s eccentric Emily. The scenes between these two are gold.

The cinematography is intimate, yet distant. Dickinson hardly ever left her homestead, she never married and turned into a recluse in later years, so most of the film takes place inside the house. The mostly stagnant camera captures that claustrophobic feel well, which draws even more attention to scenes where it is moving, like the 360 degree pan near the start and end of the film, showing the family (or what’s left of it) in the living-room. The one thing I could have lived without was the aging family portraits to show the passage of time, thereby introducing new actors for certain characters. Instead of showing every single member of the family by themselves a family portrait would’ve cut down on this rather repetitive sequence.

As most biopics I found 'A Quiet Passion' to be checklist-y, jumping from one seemingly important or well-known event to the next. The film doesn’t have as much flow to the narrative as I'd have liked. But the captivating performances more than make up for any shortcomings in that regard. Even the poetry readings Cynthia Nixon does throughout the film in form of a voice-over are interesting and fitting. A stark contrast to what I thought of the same technique used in 'Paterson'. Nixon delivers the prose eloquently, keeping her read truthful, vibrant and engaging.

Overall solid performances and witty dialogue make 'A Quiet Passion' an entertaining framework for Emily Dickinson’s poetry.

Review by Melanie Radloff.

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