Poetry in motion
‘QUIET PASSION’ IS WELL-VERSED IN EMILY DICKINSON’S LIFE
NEW YORK — Not until Terence Davies' “A Quiet Passion” has one film ever focused on the life of Emily Dickinson, one of the English language's greatest poets. The why is obvious: The Massachusetts native known as the “Belle of Amherst” was a recluse in her Amherst home until May 1886 when she died at 55. “Because she doesn't go anywhere, that doesn't matter,” insisted Davies, the writer-director of “The House of Mirth” and “The Deep Blue Sea,” during a one-on-one interview at the W Union Square. “The family is the source of all that's wonderful and awful in life, and there's great richness there.” Starring Cynthia Nixon (“Sex and the City”) and Keith Carradine as Dickinson's father, “Passion's” interiors were filmed in Belgium. However the Dickinson house exteriors and adjacent cemetery are the real deal. “It was a week at the end of filming that we came to Amherst,” Davies, 71, recalled. With no issues getting filming permits, “We filmed in late summer because she died in summer. It was glorious, but I'm always unlucky with weather. “When we shot the family group going through the cemetery for the father's funeral it was overcast. It would have been wonderful — these people in black walking in brilliant sunshine! But it wasn't to be. “We had to go with the weather because we haven't got the money to hang around for two or three days (waiting for sun).” In the cemetery, Davies restricted his crew to two spots. “You can't go where the people are buried and be standing on graves. You can't do that. It's somebody's loved one.” Anyone who imagines Dickinson as a sweet, shy, retiring sort will find “A Quiet Passion” somewhat shocking. This poet is fierce, catty, gossipy, mean even. And she's besotted with a married man who happens to be a pastor. “What people seem to forget is, where genius is concerned, they are much more interesting with their foibles” the filmmaker said. “Emily was an ordinary woman who just happened to be a genius. The problem with that is — and what's hard with that — is the world is very hard for them to negotiate because they can't see the world as ordinary people do.”