Review of A Quiet Passion (2016) by Donna R — 01 Nov 2017

A strangely awful, pretentious movie. They tried diligently, but the result is to make every moment of DIckinson's life look either excruciatingly boring or excruciatingly painful after she becomes ill.

It never grasps the intellectual and spiritual energy of the woman, spending all its time instead on emphasizing how artificial, dull, and patriarchally confining her surroundings were. The strangest part was that she did have some intense intellectual and personal exchanges in her letters, and the movie used pretty much none of this material.

Leaves her mind and poetry a mystery, and the viewer with two lost hours plus a real need for Prozac.