Poetry in motion

Emily Dickinson biopic a portrait of artist in all her complex humanity

We’ve been spoiled of late with great films about poets and poetry, from Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson with Adam Driver, to Ann Marie Fleming’s Window Horses, and Neruda from Pablo Larraín.

A Quiet Passion, from British writer-director Terence Davies, follows the life of Massachusetts poet Emily Dickinson with a more traditional biopic trajectory, but it’s not without surprises.

Following its subject from her teenage years (when she’s capably played by Emma Bell), through her long spinsterhood — the reclusive writer died aged 55 — lets the film slowly morph from a Whitmanesque wit-fest, with Catherine Bailey as a bone vivante, into something altogether more sombre.

Cynthia Nixon sinks into the role of the adult Dickinson, embodying the paradoxes inherent in a woman who wrote vast amounts of poetry and carried on great correspondences while hardly setting foot outside her childhood home.

And Davies isn’t afraid to show the darker side of the sometimes melancholy poet; like the Turner biopic from a few years ago, this is the portrait of the artist as a conflicted and altogether human creative force.