Review of A Quiet Passion (2016) by Mallory B — 10 Feb 2018

Rarely do we see a film of great emotional power, and this is one. Not in spite of the way it speaks, but because it creates its own code and language: you are entering a unique space. Just as Emily's innocent-looking poems carry a vice-like, visceral grip when you actually read them, they roar into life under Cynthia Nixon's now-present and urgent speech, and a masterful screenplay written in its own poetry to harmonise with Emily's.

The film is assiduously careful in its study of Emily, her time and place in history, and the selection of poems from her extensive body of work. Everything in the production is perfectly constructed.

Nixon may yet be compared to the greats for her release of the character's inner life into the open, physically wrenched by Emily's drive, and her frustrations. The supporting roles are all exceptionally fine - to name only a couple, Emily's diminutive mother transports scenes into ethereal, poignant dimensions, plangent with missed experience of the world; Emily's dear, tender brother becomes like a ferocious animal in his anger, lust and grief.

The themes of the film are grand - the lives of women, self-fulfilment, the importance of happiness and experience, religion, friendship, love, marriage, loss, grief and death. It demands that you take your life and wring everything that you can from it, and waste no time in doing so.

The special effects, so sparingly applied, are astonishing - even just an opening door is breathtaking, in an alchemic scene hovering between love and death. Who would think that genteel 19th century Massachusetts, and the life of a young reclusive woman there, could reach so far today into the dark corners of soul, and then urge you to hurry up and live, pushing you out.

Every word in this script is important and would repay viewing more than once to get it all. I cannot remember a more attentive cinema audience. What a pity you can't get more than one Oscar per category - this deserves at least a couple, and just for best film, to start with.