A Quiet Passion (2016)

For a person who had such a dynamic inner life, "A Quiet Passion" certainly makes Emily Dickinson's existence seem dull as nails. The film moves at a snail's pace for far longer than necessary. I had to take breaks from watching it out of sheer tedium. Dark interiors and agonizingly slow scenes capture the outward appearance of a person whose 1,800 poems and thousands of letters reveal a far more humorous, spiritual, and animated individual.That Dickinson was unknown to the outside world during her own time is not surprising, given her introversion. That a contemporary biographical film of her life wasted so much time confirming that perspective, and so little time capturing her incredible genius, is a disappointment.Don't waste time and energy watching this film; read her poetry, her letters, and biographies for insight into this unique poet. Once freed from societal constraints and rules to produce "acceptable" poetry; Dickinson created with words a prism into her complex perspective of nature, life, death and God.

A biopic about the American poètesse maudite Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), directed by the British aesthete Terence Davies, A QUIET PASSION studiously bootstraps Dickinson's disconcerted inscape through family ties and her poetry, from a young gal (Bell), who repudiates religious insularity, to her grown-up stature (played by a dauntless Nixon, and the film features a transcendent aging-morphing CGI process) of a woman enthralled by independence and sisterhood shared with her younger sister Lavinia (a modest but benignly discerning appearance from the ever-absorbing Jennifer Ehle) and a common friend Vryling Buffum (Bailey, who constantly spouts her repartee with her haughty elocution which hardly justifies the sisters' fondness for her).Suffusing with Emily's own verses through Nixon's creaky voice, the words have a delicacy of a porcelain vase surmounted at the edge of a towering shelf, ready to embrace their perdition just by a single nudge, as in the antinomy between the two most distinctive themes of her creations: death and immortality. Emily, is a contradiction, during the tenor of her life descending into reclusive spinsterhood, she is recalcitrant in defying the subservience of an almighty being, but at the same time, it is as if she has made a pact with God, to abstain from all the mundane temptations (a magic moment occurs only in her imagination decked with a slow-motion flourish when a man seems to walk into her life) in exchange of a ceaseless fount of her inspiration, and the resultant suffering becomes her cross to bear. In the later stage of her life, when death snatches both her parents (played by Carradine and a lyrically sorrowful Bacon), and embittered cynicism starts to get the better of her unalloyed spirit, Emily's eccentricity can legitimately make one's hackles rise owing to Davies' uncompromising projection of her increasingly wayward deportment and whims, eschewing from being a hagiography, the film certifies that prickliness is as essential as poignancy in the character arc since no one is perfect, although Davies' methodology is perversely rough-and-ready in terms of emotional outpourings, but thankfully, poised by a gaunt Cynthia Nixon, her central performance proffers strong ballast for all the verbal lashing-out, bloody-minded confrontation and highfalutin melodrama, and her epileptic spasm can simply humble any of those spooky manifestations in the exorcism horror genre. A prestige period drama in its core festooned by a quaintly somber hue and ample classic accompaniments (whether diegetic or not), A QUIET PASSION is not an instant crowd-pleaser but a cerebral threnody of a flesh-and-blood individual, it might not invite all the audience to her (sometimes navel-gazing) poems, but it certainly triumphs in its sagacious dissection of a troubled soul, trying to find her peace with this cruel world.

It's like Terence Davies sets out to make movies that will challenge you to stay awake through them. If I do, do I win something? Because I should.After the mournful and glacially paced "The Deep Blue Sea," I didn't think a film could come along that would more effectively numb me into somnolence. But lo and behold, here comes "A Quiet Passion," and by the same filmmaker, no less!"A Quiet Passion" tells the story of Emily Dickinson, who, as played by Cynthia Nixon, was about the most. miserable. person. ever. to spend time with. You know that friend who has the ability to suck the fun out of absolutely any situation? That's our Em. She'd be the girl who would join a group of friends (if she had any) at a football game and then spend the entire time complaining about the pointlessness of football. According to this biography, Dickinson was a frustrated artist who held people to unrealistically high moral standards and refused to accept the slightest weakness in anyone. This made her a riot to be around, as you can imagine, and caused her to die -- shocker!! -- alone and miserable.The film is funereally paced, and consists of one monotonous scene after another in which Dickinson gets her knickers in a twist about one thing or another and yells at whoever happens to be in the room with her. You might think so much yelling might at least give the film an ounce of energy, but you would be wrong. I've never been so excited in a movie to see a main character start exhibiting symptoms of a mysterious disease, because I knew then that it wouldn't be long before she died and the movie would be over.All I can say is thank God for the lovely Jennifer Ehle, who plays Dickinson's sister as a human being you might want to actually have a conversation with without wanting to stab her or yourself in the eye with the butter knife.Grade: F

It is a movie that has all the points to be a good movie, however, does not become a good movie, because none of those points gets to be well finished. It is also a film, too arrogant, that uses too many fancy phrases which makes me leave the film. I do not think that to look like an intellectual, you have to use that language.The tempo of the movie is too slow. It was not necessary and causes the viewer to be bored. He tries to make a poetic and adult film and abuses that time too many times.There is a moment when he takes the pictures, which is very good. It is a way to raise the aging of the family, but equally, to have made a photo would have been enough, it is not necessary to take photos of all, since you have already told and you are sleeping to the viewer.Cynthia Nixon, plays a formidable role, gets you to believe everything that happens to her, even illness and that is very difficult. The bad thing and I imagine that it will be, because its real personage was like this, is that being a woman so feminist that it looked for the freedom in his life and the equality with the men, thing of admiring, I do not understand why it was constantly like the others lived their life. As the movie progresses, I get worse and worse and that at first, I was completely in agreement with her. The other actors are formidable too, is the strength of this film. Even Keith Carradine and that's hard to believe in the wig they have put.The make-up and the costumes are very good except the father, who gets me much of the film.The constant voice-over of the poems is something else that I do not like at all. They make the movie slower and I do not think they are necessary.The photograph, which is almost always impressive, I think is very confused, I explain, I think this film is extremely sad, other than the director can make it cold for the viewer or at least distant and deserved a sad and cold picture and however do not marvel with a warm and friendly photograph.The manager, I think he is wrong in everything. The planes are ugly, they are all badly composed, the camera movements are empty. It seems that the actors went to shoot alone because it is a succession of close-ups, as if they were alone and that gets me a lot of the film. In addition he is wrong in the tempo and the length of the film that is too long.Of course the final sequence, I think is left, we have already learned what has happened. And above it has a whitish and warm photograph, at that moment.