A Quiet Passion

Relating the life of Emily Dickinson, Davies imbues the simple structure of the biopic with the elliptical intensity of poetry. Cynthia Nixon conveys ferocious intelligence and unexpected warmth in her portrayal of the quietly radical poet, who moves through a life of attachments, losses, and private striving, toward an urgent confrontation with eternity—all while embedded deep within her family circle in nineteenth-century Amherst, Massachusetts. Davies is above all an artist of interiors. In formal tableaux and lingering pans around lamplit rooms, he depicts Dickinson’s domestic world, and the world of her relentlessly searching mind, with characteristic tenderness and precision.