A Quiet Passion

I have read many of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters. I visited The Homestead & The Evergreens in Amherst, MA on several occasions long before this movie was made.I enjoyed this movie because I felt that Cynthia Nixon did a wonderful job with the recital of Emily Dickinsons poems. I also felt that the casting, acting and costumes in this dramatization of Emily’s life were as close as we can hope to have towards understanding this marvelous poet (not withstanding some obvious inaccuracies).That being said; there have been other attempts to make movies and TV dramatizations about Dickinsons life which were abhorrent failures (ie Wild Nights with Emily).I am shocked by all the negative reviews about this movie because I feel that “A Quiet Passion” is the closest adaptation of Emily’s life to date.There is so much temptation by liberal speculators to twist this great American poet into a sex starved lesbian. It is entirely possible that Emily Dickinson had bisexual thoughts and feelings towards certain individuals but it is highly unlikely (given her reclusive nature) and a society of intolerance that she would have ACTED upon such feelings and desires.Speculation regarding E. Dickinsons sexual preferences doesn’t mean a DAMN thing. All that matters is her wonderful poetry and letters!. In my opinion Dickinson was and still is the greatest American poet who ever lived.We Americans are obsessed with sexuality and violence. Our culture has become the new Sodom & Gomorrah. We are porn addicted and social media addicts and some are confused as to their own gender! As a nation we have turned our backs on God, and pushed aside His holy Word and the salvation that is found only in Jesus Christ. Now we are reaping the wages of sin. This pandemic is a judgment that has come upon the entire world , and it’s only the beginning of the end. Read the book of Revelation if you want to see how this world will end.A Quiet Passion was a movie made with great care and beauty in celebration of the life of Emily Dickinson and her poetry.

This film has nothing to do with the life of the real Emily Dickenson. A couple details do relate to her actual life, but the better part of the script seems to be the usual railing against religion and ranting about women in society, neither subject which seemed to be of overwhelming importance to the real Emily.The writer stresses facts about Emily based on what he believed was her life experiences. There was a vague suggestion from some quarters that she might have had some doubt about evangelical Christianity. Perhaps someone should have considered the meaning and the history of that religion before devoting a good part of this film to Emily’s rejection of her family’s religion. And who is this young woman who appears as Emily’s friend and spends her screen time flaunting religious and the role of women in terrible stiff sentences? I kept expecting her to light up a cigarette and hike up her skirts. She seems to bear no resemblance to any certain figure from Emily’s life and I wondered if there was some suggestion that Emily entertained an emotional attachment to her. Emily did have a close friendship with Susan Gilbert, the woman who eventually married her brother, Austin. This friendship is shifted to a made-up character and the new Mrs. Austin Dickenson is presented as a young lady the family has never before met and yet the groom’s father has been kind enough to build a house for the newlyweds next door.I do agree there is a nice evolution in the movie of the main character longing for approval and sinking into a bitter refuge inside her room as appreciation of her writing is never found. However, I don’t see this change as true of “The Belle of Amherst”. She enjoyed her privacy and did not seem to long for public display. She did not show any of her poems until a later date in her life from the one given in the movie. There were a couple gentlemen who coached and advised her in her work but they are not identified in this movie. Her brother reading the article in the newspaper was supposed to be a jab at her for her bad writing, when in fact this article was an inspiration to her. She spent much time caring for her mother who was reclusive before her but in this movie Emily is bitter and screeching about that task.In fact she comes across as a bitter screeching woman and not the quiet spirit who penned all those beautiful poems which Vinnie discovered among her papers after she died. (Couldn’t we have been given privy to that event in the ending of this film?) I looked forward to this movie for months, hoping for some new insight into Ms. Dickenson and her creative genius. I was ready to shut the thing off about a half hour in. I wish I had given more attention to the reviews posted here.

This is a work of sheer brilliance. Cynthia Nixon has given the finest performance of 2017, bar none! The real shame here is that she will be overlooked come Oscar time, because this is not the kind of movie that the academy honors, or should I say, the wrong person is in the role. Just think: Had this been Streep, then the attention would be there, and don't get me wrong, she's a great actress, though highly overrated. Nixon plays this role as well as anyone could ever play it, so it should just be about the performance. Critics have hailed her performance throughout 2017, but given its art-house status, and the fact that voters tend to favor end-of-year releases, or those are the ones that are shoved down their throats, it's easy to forget these small films. From the art direction, costumes, cinematography and of course, the acting, there are multiple categories in which this film excels from an awards standpoint. What does Nixon have to do, to get recognition? She was just as good in her last film,James White. She gave a gut-wrenching, heartbreaking performance that was praised, but ignored at awards time. If you enjoy great acting, see this film. There's not a bad performance in the film, and although the director took some liberties with the script, they do not ruin anything. A must see!

I had one for me and one as a gift. We both just loved it. Thank you, merci. Nycole Veilleux

Magnifique édition digibook contenant le livre avec ses 40 poèmes traduits en Anglais et en français, ainsi que des informations sur sa vie.Ce digibook contient également le DVD réalisé par Terence Davies avec l'excellente actrice Cynthia Nixon, Grand Prix d'Interprétation dont lefilm a obtenu 3 Prix et 15 Nominations en 2017. Enfin, j'ajoute que les images du DVD sont en Cinémascope couleur et d'excellente facture.

Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Maya Angelou, Sara Teasdale, Emily Dickinson. These were the only American women poets I could name just now off the top of my head, which means either my education or American culture is deficient (the former is). But it does show how seemingly rare the two go together in consciousness, or in the consciousness of some — women and poetry. Which is a nonsense when one thinks about it because women are more sensitive than men, or at least better at expressing their sensitivity. Girls are encouraged early on to embrace their feelings, whereas boys are taught to suppress theirs. Women don’t fear their feelings as men do, which makes them stronger than men in some ways. No man knows the pain and struggle of childbirth, for instance. Women are the ones who bring life into the world.Emily Dickinson (1830-86) was both sensitive and expressive. Religion weighed heavily on her, affecting her conscience and conduct, her struggle to reconcile the spiritual with the sensuous constant. Her poetry is made intense by this struggle, the soul stripped bare:The heart asks for pleasure first,And then, excuse for pain;And then, those little anodynesThat deaden suffering;And then, to go to sleep;And then, if it should beThe will of the InquisitorThe liberty to dieShe was born in the small college town of Amherst in central Massachusetts. Her father Edward was a prominent lawyer and her older brother Austin would become one as well. Her mother, also named Emily, was bright and sensitive, much like daughter Emily, but both prone to depression. During one of her mother’s frequent crying episodes she says to Emily:“Life has passed by as if in a dream. As if I’ve never been part of it.”Emily feels that her own tendency toward over-dramatisation comes from her mother. The breath of fresh air in the household is Lavinia (usually endearingly called Vinnie) who’s lively and positive. Vinnie’s love for Emily is unconditional. She recognises her sister’s honesty, goodness and purity of soul. She’s always there for her emotionally. She looks up to Emily even as Emily looks down on herself, a fate many perfectionists suffer from.Into the household eventually comes Susan Gilbert, the wife of Austin, and thereafter their baby boy. Actually, they live in the house next door, but the doors to each domicile are always open, so they come and go as if they live in both places.Early on we see the rigours young Emily, aged perhaps 14 or 15, faces in the Puritan world of her small-town upbringing. Her teacher at Mount Holyoke, a private religious seminary for girls, is Miss Lyon, a woman made rigid by the fierce tenets that form the backbone of the Bible. During an assembly of the girls she calls upon them to stand aside: those who have found God should move to their right; those who are still seeking God and salvation should move to their left. In the end one girl stands alone facing Miss Lyon. It is Emily. She moves neither right nor left because she’s confused. Scripture is unclear to her. She cannot decipher God’s messages. They are too ambivalent, too subject to conflicting interpretations. This answer is no good and Miss Lyon becomes angry. It isn’t for Emily to decipher. It’s for her to accept. God knows all and He isn’t to be questioned. But Emily does so anyway, assessing his wisdom, saying it’s her soul, not his, to which she must attend. No, says the teacher. He made your soul so it’s his, not yours. Doubt registers on Emily’s face as she hears these words — a doubt that cannot abide being lied to.Although she died of congested heart failure and kidney disease, it seems certain she suffered from epilepsy as well. Her convulsions are shown graphically in the film, her body shaking, her head thrashing violently against the pillow. In the days leading up to death her family were forced to hold her down, her painful screams muffled only by chloroform given by a doctor, an antidote that knocked her out. “I felt a funeral in my brain,” she writes in one poem. “I dropped down, and down.” Describing her brain in another poetic passage, she writes:Floods have slit the hillsAnd scooped a turnpike for themselvesShe knew something was wrong with her brain.Epilepsy ran in the extended family. Her cousin Zebina was a lifelong invalid. Her nephew Ned (son of her brother Austin) also had attacks.Another sign of epilepsy is clumsiness due to impaired motor skills. Emily was clumsy. She was known to drop crockery and there’s a scene in the film where she shatters a plate (though this is done deliberately to prove a point to her father), smashing it against the table. Inwardly she raged against her limitations and those of life: her perceived lack of beauty, her awkward social skills, her stubbornness, the social and professional inequality she faced as a woman in a man’s world, the sense that whatever poetic talent she had was undervalued and unrecognised by persons who should have been able to see its worth. She fretted, worried and doubted. At times she despaired and wept. There was love in her life, paternal and filial, but she longed for intimate, passionate love as well, though she hardly knew what it was, inexperienced as she was. Furthermore, would she even have had the confidence to accept it if it had appeared?One wonders. She was a loner in spirit, so soulmates were rare. One man she does seem to have loved was married already. He was Reverend Wadsworth, local vicar in Amherst. His sermons were dreamy and angelic, Paradise in them a celestial palace-in-waiting for all those who were good and obedient on Earth. Today the sermons read like maudlin fluff, but the imagery in them captivated those who heard them at the time. What could be finer and greater than a celestial palace in the sky, a place where happiness reigned eternally?Nothing came of Emily’s infatuation with the vicar of course. His marriage vows were sacred, vows God himself must have heard when they were uttered. The reverend cavorted with no mistresses, and Emily herself hardly matched the image of what a mistress should be, coquetry and sexual innuendo not part of her charm. In fact, such behaviour appalled her, the face she presented to the world always prim and proper.But in fantasy she had what she called her Looming Man, the dark stranger of dream who would tear her away her from all her suffering, sweeping her up in his passionate arms. Exactly how he would do this was uncertain. His identity, too, was shrouded in mists. Half corporeal, half spiritual, he was the one to save her from the heavy pull of earthly existence, as if gravity had become too much for her to bear. It made her slow, sluggish, fatigued. Like Proust, she was a bookish homebody, the Amherst family home her fortress from the wicked world beyond. Some say she suffered from agoraphobia. I doubt it. She loved the outdoors, the family garden and nature. She wasn’t cooped up in a hen house because of the natural world. It was people who made her shy and socially awkward. She didn’t like most of them, not trusting their motives, their self-interest a masquerade for charity, their sense of community a vehicle for self-advancement. Piety repelled her too if worn to mask insincerity and selfishness. The soul’s integrity is what she clung to. In a world of temptation and falsity what else could be trusted? So she guarded hers as if her life depended on it because in essence it did. It’s where the poetry comes from — her depth of soul:“Poems are my solace for the eternity that surrounds us all.”Her honesty was rapturous, ecstatic, ethereal, but also painful and depressing. The poems contain elements of both — rapture and pain, a duality she dealt with throughout her life:For each ecstatic instantWe must an anguish payIn keen and quivering ratioTo the ecstasyApart from Vinnie, her beloved younger sister, there were two other women Emily’s age whom she confided in. One was Susan, her sister-in-law, the other Vryling Buffum, a good friend of hers.Late one night in the Dickinson house Susan comes downstairs. Emily is in the parlour writing by oil lamplight. It’s probably 3:00 or 4:00 a.m, well before dawn, Emily’s favourite time of day for writing, up before the birds when all is silent save for the ticking of the family clock.Susan sits down near Emily and they quietly converse.Susan: You have your poetry.Emily: But you have a life. I have a routine.S: Does writing give you solace?E: For those of us who have minor lives, and one deprived of a particular kind of love, we know best how to starve. We deceive ourselves, and then others. It is the worst kind of lie.S: But in matters of the soul you are rigorous.E: Rigour is no substitute for happiness.Another conversation she has — this one with Vryling — is equally illuminating:Emily: For the lost soul there will be no tomorrow.Vryling: For the lost soul, the body is quite enough. Will you marry?E: I only want my family. It is not perfect. It is not Paradise. But it is far better than anything I could know. Or want.There is a cosmic and lonely dimension to the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson. We come from the cosmos, the chemicals in our bodies forged in the stars. But the universe is silent, indifferent to our fate. A poem fragment of Emily’s says the same:No colour in the rainbowPerceives when you are goneNature carries on as if you never were:We never know we goWhere we are goingWe jest and shut the doorFate following behind bolts itAnd we accost no moreToward the end she felt death coming for her, or stopping for her as she put it in verse. One fragment from a love poem to life survives:Goodbye to the life I used to liveAnd the world I used to knowAnd kiss the hills for me, just onceNow I am ready to goDeath came on 15 May 1886. A few days later her body was placed in a carriage and taken to the family plot in the churchyard cemetery, her parents lying patiently for her there:Because I could not stop for DeathHe kindly stopped for meThe carriage held but just ourselvesAnd immortalityYes, immortality. She achieved it in this life, not in the imagined world beyond.

Enorme Déception que ce Film sur Emily Dickinson; Bref, un film loupé à part la lumière et le son, j'en conviens... Emily Dickinson méritait beaucoup mieux que ce mièvre film pourtant récompensé, je ne sais encore pourquoi; La scène de l'agonie et la mort de Dickinson en vient tellement dérangeante, déconcertante, désolante, et mauvaise, que cela nous laisse pantois et navré face à tant d'Indélicatesse et d'Impudeur Cinématographique.Ayant lu, la Biographie de Emily Dickinson en Français (réalisée par l'Excellente F.Delphy), ainsi que sa Correspondance Complète et Poésies Complètes, je préfère rester sur cela et vite oublier ce navrant et si désolant hommage...

I loved the movie but was disappointed with the narrow viewing band. Do all music box productions have this narrow band?