A QUIET PASSION

Who was Emily Dickinson? What kind of a person lurked behind the poet who spent most of her life on her parents' estate in Amherst, Massachusetts? This mansion provides the setting for a film that portrays an unconventional woman about whose life very little is known. Born in 1803, Dickinson is considered to be a gifted child, but an emotional trauma forces her to give up her studies. The introverted young woman withdraws from society and writes poetry. In spite of her cloistered existence she takes her readers on a journey into the wider world. Terence Davies imagines her biography and explores how Emily Dickinson’s exceptional poems could come into being. The camera glides delicately into a life in which poetry takes up more and more space. Emily Dickinson communicates with the outside world via letters. In her correspondence with her siblings and the clergyman Charles Wadsworth she exchanges philosophical and everyday observations. To her, Wadsworth’s move to San Francisco is a tragedy. Davies’ biopic also describes a talented woman’s lonely and desperate struggle for recognition in a world dominated by men.

“I’d heard her poetry when I was about eighteen. I lived in the northwest of England and the local TV station had these little documentaries every Sunday. One was about Emily Dickinson. I’d never heard of her. It was Claire Bloom reading her poetry. So I went out and bought them, and read them, and loved them. But I had to work – I was only eighteen. Sometimes an idea will be in the back of your mind for a very long time and something will trigger it. About four years ago I really thought, “It’s such a strange life she lived”, because she only left home once and then never left home again, ever. I think I read six biographies, and found that this was just such an extraordinary life that was lived very intensely but at home – it was never boring. I think the reason it’s not boring is because her family is the repository of all that’s wonderful and all that’s terrible in the world.“

Terence Davies for Photogénie