The cinema of Terence Davies has drawn on the books and plays of Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth), John Kennedy Toole (The Neon Bible), and Terence Rattigan (The Deep Blue Sea). His early works (Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes) were autobiographical. Davies was not—is not—out and proud, but homosexual and not all that happy about it. Rather than celebrate difference, he worries it into an exquisite torture with a brilliant musical soundtrack.

The first hour of his new film, A QUIET PASSION (starring Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson), essays the Massachusetts poet’s young life with line after line of Wildean wit, as Emily, her sister Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle), and her close friend Susan (Jodhi May) expose and eviscerate the hypocrisies of their mid-nineteenth-century society:

“The best compliments are always dubious—that’s part of their charm.”

“Cherish your ignorance. You never know when you might need it.”

“Going to church is like going to Boston. You only enjoy it after you’ve gone home.”

“A women should aspire to be younger than her waistline.”

“Never play happy music at a wedding. It’s so misleading.”

And so on. But since there were no epigrams addressing Dickinson’s state of middle-aged virginity, as she grew older she grew bitter. But her words could always clear the air:

“Any argument about gender is war, because that is slavery.”

“Those of us who live minor lives deprived of a certain kind of love, we know how to starve. We deceive others, and then ourselves. It is the worst kind of lie….Rigor is no substitute for happiness.”

 

A QUIET PASSION, through May 18

LAEMMLE ROYAL, 11523 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Los Angeles

LAEMMLE PLAYHOUSE 7, 673 East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena

LAEMMLE TOWN CENTER 5, 17200 Ventura Boulevard, Encino

A QUIET PASSION, May 12 through May 18

LAEMMLE MONICA FILM CENTER, 1332 2nd Street, Santa Monica

laemmle.com/films/41874

Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion, directed by Terence Davies
Image credit: Music Box Films