Movie Review: A Quiet Passion

A Quiet Passion **** / *****

Directed by: Terence Davies.

Written by: Terence Davies. 

Starring: Cynthia Nixon (Emily Dickinson), Jennifer Ehle (Vinnie Dickinson), Duncan Duff (Austin Dickinson), Keith Carradine (Father - Edward Dickinson), Jodhi May (Susan Gilbert), Joanna Bacon (Mother - Emily Norcross), Catherine Bailey (Vryling Buffam), Emma Bell (Young Emily Dickinson),

Benjamin Wainwright (Young Austin Dickinson), Annette Badland (Aunt Elizabeth), Rose Williams (Young Vinnie Dickinson), Noémie Schellens (Mabel Loomis Todd), Miles Richardson (Pastor), Eric Loren (Reverend Wadsworth), Stefan Menaul (Mr. Emmons), Sara Vertongen (Miss Lyon), Simone Milsdochter (Mrs. Wadsworth).

 

How does a filmmaker go about making a biopic of a famous person about which little is known? Emily Dickinson is one of the best known poets in the English language – arguably America’s greatest poet ever – and yet she lived a quiet life, pretty much in obscurity – only a few of her poems being published anonymously in a small, local paper run by a friends of her fathers. She died in 1886, having never married, and barely having left Amherst, Massachusetts – and in later years, barely leaving her bedroom. It wasn’t until after her death that her sister discovered her poems, and had them published – they haven’t gone out of print since.

 

Dickinson’s life then, despite her poetry, would seem like it wouldn’t really lend itself to a movie of her life. Yet in the hands of Terrence Davies, A Quiet Passion becomes a wonderful film. Davies was inarguably the right filmmaker for the task – he has often made films that are largely limited to the interior of a single family home (using his home life as fodder for Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes), and last year’s Sunset Song, although it had a larger scope than this one, again focused on a single home, and the action inside of it. In A Quiet Passion, Cynthia Nixon plays Emily Dickinson as a fiercely intelligent, quick witted woman, who was ever loyal to her family. That wit gets in her trouble from time-to-time – although Dickinson was religious, her idea of religion differed from some in the clergy. Her deep love for her family came along with high moral standards for them as well – standards that lead her to feel betrayed if you cannot live up to them.

 

As with every film Davies has ever made, A Quiet Passion is a beautiful film – wonderful shot by Florian Hoffmeister, who worked with Davies before on The Deep Blue Sea. This film doesn’t allow Davies and Hoffmeister the opportunities for beautiful shots of rain soaked London like that film did, yet they still find a way to make the film – all set in Dickinson home look interesting.

 

The film is uncommonly wordy for a Davies film – his film more often than not show, don’t tell, their stories, through montage and music. But it is appropriate for this film that Davies screenplay takes so much joy in language – and its precise usage – as Dickinson does in her poetry. The film seems mannered at first – perhaps a little over-written. Yet, the film is so beautifully performed, that it doesn’t take long to fall into its rhythms of the film. Nixon is great, but almost as good is Jennifer Ehle as her sister Vinnie – who is ever smiling, but is made of tougher stuff than she appears, Catherine Bailey as their friend Vryling Buffam, who is outwardly rebellious, although more conventional than she first appears.

 

A Quiet Passion is an odd film – which befits the subject matter. Dickinson didn’t lead the type of life that normally gets the biopic treatment, so it would stand to reason that she wouldn’t be subject of a normal film about her life. A Quiet Passion is something altogether different, and wonderful. I’ve typically been cooler on Davies than many – I admire his work more than I like it – but for me this is his best since The House of Mirth (which will always be my favorite of his films). An odd film, but a vital one.

Movie Review: Sunset Song

Sunset Song

Directed by: Terence Davies.

Written by: Terence Davies based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

Starring: Agyness Deyn (Chris Guthrie), Peter Mullan (John Guthrie), Kevin Guthrie (Ewan Tavendale), Hugh Ross (Inspector), Douglas Rankine (Long Rob), Ian Pirie (Chae Strachan), Niall Greig Fulton (John Brigson), Jim Sweeney (Preacher), Jack Greenlees (Will Guthrie), Julian Nest (Peter Semple), Trish Mullin (Mistress Melon).

The surfaces of Terence Davies’ movies – from his breakthrough Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) to his latest, Sunset Song, are always beautiful. His films are could be considered tragedies, in which his main characters are pulled down, and often destroyed – and yet, are ultimately about memory. His characters are frequently miserable, yet also frequently remembering times when they were more miserable – with a strange sense of nostalgia. At his best – like The House of Mirth (2000), his films can be quiet stunners. Yet, personally, I quite often feel distant from his movies – that beautiful surface keeping me arms lengths away from his characters. This is true of Sunset Song – which is lesser hands would almost be comic in its tour of abject misery from beginning to end, but in Davies’ hands mostly works – even though I don’t think the movie ever quite gets inside the head of its main character as it tries to do.

 

The film takes place in the years before – and in the late stages, during – WWI, in Scotland. Chris (Agyness Deyn) is a gifted student being raised by a brutish father (Peter Mullen) and a mother who has been beaten down by not only her father – who thinks nothing of raping her – but by society itself, who gives a woman like her no option except to continue to be raped by someone like her husband. Mullen has played this role before – often – although it must be said he’s frequently brilliant in it, so it makes some sense to cast him again (it also allows Davies to perhaps more thinly sketch him than normal – because Mullan is able to do so much without doing much of anything). Those are tough years working the same, small patch of land, and having almost as few options as her mother. Eventually, she will be alone on that land – and has a brief respite from the tragedy when she meets and falls in love with Ewan (Kevin Guthrie), an overly sensitive soul. You almost have to laugh when WWI breaks out – knowing full well what is coming next to the happy couple.

 

Deyn is a model turned actress – which is unsurprising, since she is undeniably gorgeous, and Davies camera certainly highlights that beauty. It is a quiet, understated performance that generally works – it’s in the less understated moments where she struggles – but lacks the depth that someone like Gillian Anderson brought to The House of Mirth or Rachel Weisz did in The Deep Blue Sea. Deyn lacks those depths – and the voiceover in the film, which talks of “two Chris’” warring with each other is basically trying to do the heavy lifting that Deyn’s performance cannot do. The movie clocks in at well over two hours, and for the most part, is rather languidly paced – which makes some of the things that happened in the third act, that feel rushed, harder to understand (Ewan’s sudden transformation – and then reverse transformation seems to happen in a blink of an eye).

 

Yet, despite my reservations on the film, I do have to admit that it did slowly win me over. It helps that Davies’ film is, as always, meticulously shot and crafted. The exteriors are shot in 65MM, and are as utterly beautiful as anything in a Terrence Malick film – a comparison that is unavoidable, given Davies’ beautiful shots of rustling wheat throughout the film. The use of music – another Davies’ specialty – is equally brilliant, and underlines the themes of memory, love and regret without beating you over the head with them.

 

In short, Sunset Song is perhaps the most beautiful film you will see this year – the Twitter account One Perfect Shot will more screenshots out of this film than any film since Hou’s The Assassin last fall. If the content cannot quite live up to the craft, perhaps that understandable – even forgivable.

Movie Review: The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea ***
Directed by: Terence Davies.
Written by: Terence Davies based on the play by Terence Rattigan.
Starring: Rachel Weisz (Hester Collyer), Tom Hiddleston (Freddie Page), Simon Russell Beale (Sir William Collyer), Ann Mitchell (Mrs. Elton), Jolyon Coy (Philip Welch), Karl Johnson (Mr. Miller), Harry Hadden-Paton (Jackie Jackson), Sarah Kants (Liz Jackson), Barbara Jefford (Collyer's Mother).

British filmmaker Terrence Davies is trapped in the 1950s – both in his mind, and in his cinematic technique. And I do not mean that as a bad thing. His best known film – Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and to a lesser extent its sequel, The Long Day Closes (1992) were cinematic mood pieces, contrasting the happy music of the 1950s pop songs, with the dreary lives he saw around him growing up in Liverpool during that time. His last film, Of Time and the City (2008), was a documentary history of his hometown Liverpool, and how it has transformed since those childhood days. My personal favorite of his films, and his most recent dramatic effort, The House of Mirth (2000), was set in turn of the century New York, and how society destroys a woman whose crime was to fall in love. While British films were revolutionized, for better and worse, in the 1960s, Davies wants to keep the style of films he grew up with alive and well. And with The Deep Blue Sea, he mainly succeeds.

Based on the play by Terence Ratigan – whose best known work, The Browning Version, was about a classics teacher at a boarding school who is being forced out, and comes to realize that everyone, from his students, to his wife, to his best friend, essentially hate him. His lesser know The Deep Blue Sea can be viewed as a darker version of Noel Coward and David Leans Brief Encounter – but one where the lovers don’t stay with their spouses, but actually leave them. While, at least one of them does.

This is Hester (Rachel Weisz), who has a good, but boring marriage, to Sir William (Simon Russell Beale), a well-respected judge. But she meets a young war veteran named Freddie (Tom Hiddleston) and is willing to give up everything for him. While she is madly in love with Freddie, she knows that she is little more than an amusement for him – he loves her in a way, but that isn’t very much. He cannot love anything or anyone but himself. And while a torrid love affair with a married woman is one thing, it’s actually quite hard to carry on a real life with her. Going into the relationship, Hester, not Freddie, knows that it is doomed to failure, but she goes for it anyway. Why. Because for Hester, who always done what is expected of her, Freddie is an all-consuming passion, and even a short while with him is worth it for her.

As with all of Davies’ films, The Deep Blue Sea is meticulously crafted – perhaps too much so. The period details – from the upper class home of Sir William, to the low rent apartment of Freddie, to the local pub – the movie gets the look and feel of the 1950s just about perfectly. And like all of his films, The Deep Blue Sea is more of a slow burn than a fiery romance. Weisz is asked to carry the film, and she succeeds. Weisz is one of those actresses who can be either great – like in The Constant Gardener – or hopelessly affected – like The Shape of Things. Here, she is asked to do so much by doing so little. Her performance is one of grand emotions, that she has to keep simmering just beneath the surface, and she succeeds.

Davies film is ultimately about unrequited love – and how that even that is better than no love at all. For Hester, she knows Freddie doesn’t love her – but it’s enough for her that she loves him. It’s better than being with Sir William – who interestingly is not painted as a monster, but as a good and decent yet boring man.

What keeps The Deep Blue Sea from being a great movie – at least for me – is how devoid of passion it really does seem. It’s a little too passive for my liking – a little too slow. I almost think the movie would have worked better had it been about a half hour shorter – and the movie isn’t long at only 94 minutes – but there’s a moment about an hour into the movie that pretty much says all what the last half hour movie says in one silent moment. A movie needs to find its own length – sometimes that means a movie much longer that normal (like Olivier Assayas’ Carlos), but sometimes that means shorter. Davies film goes on just a little too long for its own good.

The Best Films I've Never Seen Before: Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)

Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) ***
Directed by: Terence Davies.
Written by: Terence Davies.
Starring: Pete Postlethwaite (Father), Freda Dowie (Mother), Lorraine Ashbourne (Maisie), Angela Walsh (Eileen), Dean Williams (Tony), Jean Boht (Aunty Nell), Michael Starke (Dave), Andrew Schofield (Les), Debi Jones (Micky), Chris Darwin (Red), Vincent Maguire (George).

Terence Davies’ Distant Voices, Still Lives plays like a memory or perhaps a dream. There really isn’t a plot to the movie – there is certainly no narrative drive – and the characters remain somewhat hazy and not really well defined. The people lack depth. And yet, I found Distant Voices, Still Lives to be a quietly transfixing, and ultimately moving film. The first half of the film is bleak and depressing, but it gives way to a second half that is more upbeat, and perhaps even hopeful, even though there is still darkness.

The first half of the film revolves around one Liverpool family’s upbringing in the 1940s with an abusive, cruel father (Pete Postlewaite). The three children are now young adults, and as they father grows sicker, and ultimately dies, we look book at their life as children through each of their eyes. Two of them remember only the bad about their father – his mean streak and cruelty that you never could tell when he was going to explode. They also remember the resolve of their mother, who tries her best to make their lives bearable. Divorce is never mentioned as an option. Yet one of the three children, the youngest, remembers the good moments with their father – how he was at points capable of being tender and even kind. I think this is somewhat of a survival mechanism – some of us just cannot bring ourselves to deal with the pain in our lives, so we whitewash over it.

The second half of the film, following the death of the father, is more upbeat. We see the children move into adulthood, and become better people then their father was – and have healthier married relationships than their parents did. There is a note of darkness, as they do see one of their friends trapped in the same cycle of control and abuse, and feel powerless to stop it. But ultimately from the films ugly beginning, their emerges hope.

Music is very important to the film – and the way Davies uses it in the two halves of his movie evolves. In the first half, the shiny happy songs of the 1940s offset against the cruelty we see in the film – most memorably setting a scene o f abuse to Ella Fitzgerald’s Taking a Chance on Love. Davies also has the cast do some of their own singing in the film. Music plays an important role in the film – just like I think it does with memory. Songs can have different associations for different people that have nothing at all to do with what the song is actually about.

To me, Distant Voices, Still Lives was a fascinating little movie – ultimately quite moving when you allow yourself to get on its wavelength. This is not a movie about plot or characters, but about memory. Most directors when they look back at their childhood have an sense of nostalgia that doesn’t match up to reality, but here, Davies sees the time in which he grew up with his eyes open. Ultimately, for me, I do not think it is a great film. I do think perhaps I require something more to hold onto – to sink my teeth into – than what Davies offers here, which is ultimately more surface and style than substance. But it is a wonderful little film just the same.

DVD VIews: Of Time and the City

Of Time and the City ** ½
Written & Directed By: Terence Davies

Terence Davies’s Of Time and the City is a interesting little documentary about the filmmakers hometown of Liverpool, England. Best know as the home of the Beatles, Davies’ film sheds light on the city as a whole, concentrating on the directors formative years after WWII in through the 1960s. Made up of archival footage, the film offers a fascinating insight into the city, the country and the filmmaker.

The movie has garnered much critical attention since it’s debut at last year’s Cannes film festival. I understand the critical acclaim the film has received, even if I cannot fully embrace it. Films like Of Time and the City are rare nowadays. In an industry dominated by what’s new and exciting, Of Time and the City takes a bold look backwards – to examine the past, to help understand the present. The images found by Davies are fascinating and beautiful in their everyday quality. His voiceover narration offers an interesting view of the past. Sometimes romantic and nostalgic, sometimes full of anger and rage, Davies does not shy away from exposing his soul as an artist.

Had this been a short film, I probably would have loved it. But stretched over feature length, the film became tiresome and repetitive to me. The images are all beautiful, but after a while they simply start to blend together, and lose the power that they have in isolation. Davies voiceover narration is similar. Once hearing about his struggles with his sexuality, or his problems with the monoarchy and the history of the city is fascinating – but soon it’s all just too much.

Movies like this get critical attention because they are so different from everything else out there. It’s true that you are unlikely to see another film quite like Of Time and the City this year, so for that reason alone it may be worth renting. Yet, I cannot help but to compare the film to last year’s film My Winnipeg, by Canadian maverick Guy Maddin. That film, part documentary, part fantasy, was a fascinating look at the director’s love/hate relationship with his home town. Even when Maddin goes over the top into fantasy, he is exposing some buried truth about his city. For me, it reaches a level that Davies film simply does not. I certainly did not dislike the film, nor would I discourage someone who thinks its sounds fascinating from seeing the film. Yet for me, there just wasn’t enough here for me to truly fall in love with the film. Perhaps had I had a more personal relationship with the city in question - or was more familar with Davies other work as a director - I would have responded differently. But I did not, so I have to be honest.