A Quiet Passion is a headache-inducing stain on Emily Dickinson’s legacy

Part biopic and part visual poem to Emily Dickinson, A Quiet Passion attempts to showcase the American poet’s life against the backdrop of patriarchy and the harsh Christianity of mid-1800s New England. Instead, we get an excruciatingly slow and portentous essay that looks like it’s been presented by the local drama club.

With its subject known for being a complete recluse in her family home, the entire two-hour film is set in the confines of the Dickinson property, with a barely existent plot based around visits from a revolving cast of inconsequential characters and the fact that she’d never married. Wooden actors loudly pontificate to each other with Monty Python levels of hamminess and a complete lack of connection to the story or each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh-XATkaRl0

The editing is jarring and almost headache-inducing, with the vast majority of shots in close-up, stifling the story or performances of any chance to breathe. Scenes are thrown together in completely random fashion with no forward movement, let alone establishment in time or place, leaving the viewer feeling tired and unrewarded.

With such extreme levels of theatrics, A Quiet Passion’s only redeeming feature is the stellar work of Cynthia Nixon as Dickinson and Jennifer Ehle as her sister Lavinia, who both work their guts out to push through a cumbersome script in an attempt to find some real connection. While the script paints Dickinson as self-absorbed and prickly, Nixon manages to bring a warm yet defiant approach to the role, and even pushes through some very long on-screen fits to still bring some humanity to the character.

The film sadly skips any of the legitimately interesting things about Dickinson’s life, instead offering up everyone’s definition of a period nightmare. Ironically, the bookshop next to the cinema sold editions of her poetry for less than the ticket price, and that would be a far better investment.

A Quiet Passion opens in cinemas on Thursday June 22.

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