'A QUIET PASSION': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)Critically acclaimed biopic based on the life of legendary poet Emily Dickinson. The film stars Cynthia Nixon and Emma Bell as Dickinson, in different stages of her life, and it costars Jennifer Ehle, Keith Carradine, Duncan Duff and Joanna Bacon. The film was directed and written by Terrence Davies, and it's also one of the best reviewed movies of the year (by critics). I found parts of the film to be really interesting, and educational, but it's definitely a long and slow-paced movie. The film details the life of Emily Dickinson from when she was a young rebellious woman (Bell), till when she was a passionate (rebellious) adult poet (Nixon). It shows her relationships with her family and friends, some of which were conservative, and others were more progressive (like her). It also shows her lack of romantic relationships with men, something she blamed on a looks bias towards her (the movie explains). It also shows her frustrations with society in general, and her battle with the illness that killed her.What I liked most about the film is it's comments on looks prejudice, something Dickinson was extremely frustrated with (at least in the movie), and it's something that I've battled with my whole life as well. So this part of the film was really relatable to me, and educational (if it's true). I also loved her rebellious nature, and her passion for art (specifically poetry). The movie is also really slow-paced though, and it could have been edited a lot better in my opinion.

(Flash Review)I have zero experience with poetry so was hoping to gain insight into what made Emily Dickenson a literary icon. For some reason the director omitted the core middle part of her life. It focused on her childhood and her later years. What an odd way to scope this film. So you peer into her childhood as she wrestled with her faith and late in life as she was a stubborn, snarky and anti-social woman. What light was the director trying to showcase her in? The only insight into her poetry were some spliced in poetic narration moments. The film is plum full of sophisticated dialog, many quiet moments of contemplation and quality cinematography. There wasn't really much of a plot so you just watch time pass and several snippy conversations as Emily interacts with gentlemen suitors and potential publishers. Thus, I started to peek at my watch with 30min remaining. There was however, a really bad-ass time period transition from childhood to adulthood. The film needed a scope rethink.

Terence Davies, a director who specializes in period settings, dimly lit interiors and intimate family dramas, seems like the perfect match for his protagonist here, who rarely left the grounds of her family home (the location for the film's exterior scenes) and was known to her Amherst neighbors as "The Myth." Davies has said that Cynthia Nixon was originally cast because of her physical resemblance to the pale, red-haired poet, though her amazing subtlety as an actress and her sharp intelligence can't have done any harm. To the evident dismay of her fans (see earlier reviews, passim), instead of the sharp-eyed nature poet or the gentle, self-mocking social satirist, Davies gives us Emily the existentialist---uncompromising, irreverent, no fan of Longfellow ("gruel!"), suspicious of the clergy (or even of the Deity Himself), preoccupied with death, bereavement and "eternity." Dickinson mavens will no doubt object to the additions and subtractions in Davies's script. There's lots of Vryling Buffham---except for the foofy name, an invented character who helps young Emily and her sister Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle) fill their days with brittle, "superficial" chatter--not so much of Thomas Wentworth Higginson and other significant figures in her life. A more serious problem, IMHO, is that Davies's dialogue sounds pretty stagy in these early scenes, like a mashup of Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde, and even old pros like Nixon and Ehle can seem uncomfortable with their lines. As Emily's adult personality becomes more sharply defined, though, and her craving for solitude and certainty more intense, Davies is entirely in his element, and the second half of the film is totally involving.Keith Carradine is a good left-field casting choice for the whiskery paterfamilias, Edward Dickinson, and radiant Jennifer Ehle is always welcome. Belgian singer/actress Noémie Schellens makes Mabel Loomis Todd, Emily's brother Austin's scandalous love interest, seem suitably irresistible. (Fact check: though the lovers were carrying on in a room adjoining Emily's, she and Mabel never actually set eyes on each other, or so we're told.) A bracketing scene, in which Austin's wife Susan confesses to Emily that she finds "that particular part of marriage" distasteful, is quite affecting (though also presumably invented). The most powerful shot in the film is a poetic, purely visual expression of Dickinson's complex attitude toward love and solitude: after she rebuffs a series of visitors (including a newspaper editor who's in the doghouse for adjusting her eccentric punctuation), we watch as she's visited by a phantom lover, a time-lapse blurry apparition that mounts the staircase to seek her out in her bedroom.

Worst movie I have seen in a long time. I thought it was poorly acted and very tedious. Although it may seem to be an accurate portrayal of Emily Dickinson, for me that is it's only positive point. I did not finish the movie because I found it to arduous a task to endure any longer.