With A QUIET PASSION, Terence Davies has given us his masterpiece (so far, at least)...

... as well as gifting that fine actress Cynthia Nixon with the opportunity to shine brightly in the best role she's had thus far. So very good is Ms Nixon that her work bears comparison with that of last year's best actress, Rebecca Hall. In A QUIET PASSION -- which tells the story of one of America's greatest poets, Emily Dickinson -- writer/director Terence Davies has found the subject and the means to express it that puts into play all of what is best about his work (his great feeling for period style, speech and behavior) and none of what sometimes mars his efforts (extremely slow pacing in which meaning can disappear into the too lengthy moment). Here, everything works together to form what seems to me very close to film perfection. 

Most surprising of all is how wonderfully funny, genuinely witty and humorous so much of his movie turns out to be. (The filmmaker is shown at right.) Could Emily Dickinson have been this charming and delightful? I hope so, for together Ms Nixon and her director certainly make the poet seem so. And very believably, too. Granted, hers is very dry wit, but that would seem to befit the time and place --Massachusetts in the mid 1800s -- and Davies' dialog is endlessly enriching. Really, we hang on every word as we savor the humor, anger and, just as often, the surprise.

Dickinson was an original, a quiet rebel who simply stood her ground, as we note from the film's first scene, in which the head mistress of a girls' school gives the younger version of Emily (played by Emma Bell, above) a good dressing down -- at which our young poet stands her ground and gives us an appropriate taste of what is to come.  Mr. Davies has always preferred quiet, smooth elisions to any flashy effects in his films. Here his flashiest and most remarkably effective is a family photo session in which the younger Emily morphs subtly into the older Ms Nixon, below. This is brilliantly, beautifully handled, and I'd watch the entire film again just to see it once more.

The entire Dickinson family, in-laws included, is brought to wonderful life by the ace cast Mr. Davies has assembled. Keith Carradine (below) seems to grow into a better and stronger actor as he ages. This may be his finest hour playing Emily's stern but loving father who, as much as he is troubled by her behavior appears to somehow secretly treasure it. How Carradine exhibits this is one of the film's wonderful and most subtle accomplishments and also provides the chance for the actor to show a delightfully stern comedic sense. (His "I am smiling" is perhaps the movie's most hilarious line.)

The lovely Jennifer Ehle (below, right) plays Emily sister, Vinnie, with such graciousness and joy that you'll want a sister so tender but honest, while Duncan Duff handles the brotherly duties with typically patriarchal entitlement -- a state against which Emily smartly and rightly railed for most of her life.

Even the sad sister-in-law Susan (a fine turn by the splendid Jodhi May, shown below right) is given her due, in one scene in particular, in which sapphic love is alluded to but not directly addressed.

This seems wise, as -- from what we can tell by Davies' interpretation of Dickinson's life -- the poet would have wanted a heterosexual love but due to a combination of her moral stringency, fear of intimacy and health problems both physical and mental (very possibly a kind of agoraphobia or even something a bit bi-polar), any love relationship beyond that of her immediate family was not to be.

Throughout his movie, Davies intersperses Dickinson's poetry, as appropriate to the theme of the moment. This should send both newcomers and lovers of her work back to the source. The cinematography, too (by Florian Hoffmeister), as per usual for a Davies film, is first-rate.

But family -- ah, what that appears to have meant to Emily! The movie captures this as well as any film I've seen, yet without the usual attached sentimentality (think Little Women in any of its incarnations). There is a stringency here that befits Dickinson so very well, and there is marvelous good humor, too. There is also a coming-to-terms with sickness and death that's appropriate to a tale like this and characters such as these.

I would say that A Quiet Passion is a masterpiece of biographical film-making. But that is too puny. Let's just call it a masterpiece, period. From Music Box Films and running two hours and five minutes, the movie opens this Friday, April 14, in New York City (at the newly re-opened Quad Cinema and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema) and at three venues in Emily's home state of Massachusetts. On April 21 the film hits Ann Arbor and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal), and from there it will soon open across the entire country. Here in South Florida, it opens on May 12 at the AMC Sunset Place, South Miami; the Living Room Theaters, Boca Raton; and the Bill Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables. To view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and venues.click here, then scroll down and click on THEATERS. 

Master of time, place & feeling, Terence Davies is back with THE DEEP BLUE SEA

I have heard certain film fans equate the work of Terence Davies (Of Time and the City, The House of Mirth, The Neon Bible, The Long Day Closes and Distant Voices, Still Lives) with nostalgia. Well, yes, all of Davies' film deal with the past. But they are so much more than mere nostalgia that TrustMovies never thinks of that word when a Davies film comes up. So keenly and meaningfully does this movie-maker capture time and place, together with the feelings that these arouse in his narrator or protagonist that Mr. Davies creates an unforgettable world like no one else's -- which we can then enter. He has done it again with THE DEEP BLUE SEA, a shimmering, classic testament to the power of love and lust to create and destroy.

In his new film, which he directed and adated from the play by Terence Rattigan, in addition to offering up a place (England) and a time (post-WWII) and those "feelings" he is so adept at churning, Mr. Davies (shown at left) has given one of our finest actresses, Rachel Weisz (Agora) the chance the inhabit one of modern literature's great dissections of a woman overcome with and by love. Ms Weisz (below) does the role proud, and Mr. Davies does the same by Ratttigan, though in a manner more elusive and impressionistic than what the playwright achieved. I wonder what the late Terence would think of this work by the Terence still with us? I'd like to imagine he'd be surprised, and then, after a time of getting used to it, thrilled.

Initially, it is a surprise to view Weisz, above, as someone so passive and acted upon. Yet the more we see and study her, the more it is clear how -- after a passion-free marriage to her husband, a judge (beautifully limned by Simon Russell Beale, below) -- her adulterous affair with the former RAF pilot, played with energy, charm and more than a hint of trouble by a fine Tom Hiddleston (shown two photos below, of Thor, Midnight in Paris and War Horse), has not simply knocked her off her feet but damaged her balance and her ability to understand and act.

All this is shown rather than told us, with Davies' usual quiet camera, and his long takes and splendid use of music (from the song sung in the subway air raid to the 50s standard You Belong to Me). If the filmmaker were not so damned empathetic (and Ms Weisz not so riveting and deeply embedded in her character), we might grow tired of this troubled woman who's clearly a pain to those around her and a danger to herself. But we don't.

Instead we begin to identify even more strongly with her character Hester, and then, amazingly enough, with everyone else. The two Terences have given us a deep, sad and finally kind lesson about love in many of its forms.

From the stern but understanding landlady (played by Ann Mitchell) to the would-be doctor who helps in time to trouble, to the husband and his cold, graceless mother (a fine job by Barbara Jefford, below) and even the somewhat callow lover: Everyone is doing the best s/he can, which makes the film all the sadder -- and then all the wiser.

This is a rich, warm movie -- and one that is, as you'd expect from Mr. Davies, exceedingly beautiful. It is also quiet and almost shockingly calm. Even the melodrama -- yes, love can be quite melodramatic -- is subdued. But if you've ever experienced heart-break, you should be able to identify. And as a film buff, you'll bask.

The Deep Blue Sea (98 minutes, from Music Box Films) opens this Friday in a raft of cities in New York, California and Florida and will then expand elsewhere across the country. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.