The great and singular 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson requires a one-of-a-kind filmmaker to tell the story of her life, and in Terence Davies she has found a soulmate. The film follows the poet from her rebellious college days to her increasingly reclusive life in the bosom of her family, eventually to her painful death.
As Dickinson, Cynthia Nixon gives a career-defining performance that captures the acerbic wit, ferocious independence and increasing bitterness of a woman whose genius went unrecognized in her lifetime.
"A Quiet Passion" is a film of both scathing social satire and tragic grandeur.