Austen powers bring Emily to life
A Quiet Passion (12A) Verdict: Admirable biopic ★★★★✩
LIKE our own Jane Austen, the 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson never married, died in middle age and, to put it mildly, didn’t lead a wildly eventful life.
But in this excellent biopic, veteran British writer-director Terence Davies turns her introspection and reclusiveness into virtues.
He is helped by a truly marvellous lead performance by Cynthia Nixon: subtle, nuanced and powerful.
When we meet Emily, however, she is a young woman (played by Emma Bell) refusing to toe the line at a joyless school. ‘I fear that you are a no-hoper,’ says her prim teacher, but, of course, the very opposite is true.
By the time Nixon takes over, Emily is living at home, bursting with ideas, but forced largely to bounce them off her wholesome sister Lavinia (Jennifer Ehle, also splendid).
Her witty friend Miss Buffum’s (Catherine Bailey) slightly tiresome non-stop torrent of Wildean epigrams is Davies’ only misjudgement. This upper-class Massachusetts society is every bit as starchy and patriarchal as the world Austen wrote about, so Emily must demonstrate her genius however she can.
The film follows her to her deathbed, gently chronicling her triumphs, disappointments and suppressed passion for a married clergyman.
Much of the action, or inaction, takes place indoors, yet this is still an exquisite picture to look at. As with Davies’s last film, Sunset Song, practically every frame could be a painting. He is a cherishably singular film-maker.