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July 18th, 2017 | #1 |
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A Quiet Passion
A Quiet Passion was director Terence Davies biopic of Emily Dickinson. It stars Cynthia Nixon as Emily, and begins dramatically enough where a young Emily refuses to believe in God and leaves the girl's school where she was enrolled. She's picked up by her father, played by Keith Carradine, and Emily goes home to Amherst…to be a snooty, elitist poet.
I think Dickinson is overrated. Some of her verse is splendid, a lot of it sounds like a greeting card, but my impression from the film is Emily was a recluse partly from her health, elitism, and her father's dominance. Everyone wears black, life is quiet and slow. Emily makes a lot of jokes about people who aren't as bright as she is, but although some critics thought this a funny film, I was cold to Emily. Really, if you want jokes like that, go to Alex Linder. He rules. Emily has conflicts with Austin, her brother, played by Duncan Duff. Duff is listed as A Scottish actor, but I think he looks half-Japanese, especially in the eyes and brows. Could someone clear this up for me? Austin likes Emily, but turns on her, especially when she denounces him for stepping out on his wife. Jennifer Ehle as Vinnie, her sister, gives Emily some comfort, but I just Emily cold and unlikable. She rarely got published, and when publishers came to see her, she refused to see them and brushed them off. It didn't seem a very enjoyable household or life. The movie was filmed at the Dickinson house in Amherst. I've been there, so I appreciated the location. The whole Emily Dickinson thing…the isolated, frail artist too good to mix with the world…reminded me of something Paul Johnson wrote about Dickinson, in that she was privileged to live in New England and its relative security during the Civil War. Had she been a poet living in South Carolina, there was no way the war could have been kept out of her life or poetry. I also think this kind of poetic/artistic isolation culminated in much of our artistic sterility, where the puritan ethos translated into political correctness. I enjoy the New England of the past, having lived there, but I think I'd find the South more open, and I could see why the Confederates fought like hell to keep the Yankees out of Dixie. I was reminded of Alex's excellent review of Ride with the Devil, which all of you should read, where he contrasts northern/southern views of life. It was a sterile film to me, and I had to get over remembering Nixon from Sex and the City. It had its points in being a well recreated period film, and we were free from any blacks or minorities (but IS Duncan Japanese?), and compared to the comic book movies out, it was refreshing. If anyone here is a Dickinson fan, here's your movie. |
July 20th, 2017 | #2 |
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Supposedly Emily warmed up toward the end in real life, embracing her pie-baking Auntie role, and even got as near as she ever got toward spearing a husband. The family take is that she was an otherwise normal woman who was very introverted. Of course (((filmmakers))) would portray her as a snooty bitch. She was a white gentile, after all.
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July 20th, 2017 | #3 |
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A Quiet Passion
I also think a certain part of the cultural elite like the idea of the artist as recluse and invalid. An active man or woman in the arts seems contrary, although you could say Hemingway was certainly active.
I just don't warm to Dickinson. A woman I like better is Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), who was in very much the same era and locale. Margaret was a classical scholar and friend of Emerson and Thoreau, became America's first foreign correspondent, and as a feminist introduced a series of consciousness raising sessions for women. She was considered far too brash. As Edgar Alan Poe said, 'there are three sexes in America: men, women, and Margaret Fuller.' Margaret led a determined life of intellectual strength and examination of society. She also joined the Italian revolution of 1848 against the Pope, had a child by an Italian count, and her life reads like a movie, but she'd almost unknown. I wrote a play about her, and am also fascinated that, although espousing women's rights, in the end she had a child and became a devoted mother. Tragically, she and her family drowned in a shipwreck off the New York shore in 1850. I think her story would make a hell of a movie. But one thing you notice about Hollywood is they make the same subject over and over. How many Huckleberry Finns do you have or The Three Musketeers? And I really am curious about Duncan Duff. I just think he looks Japanese. |
July 22nd, 2017 | #4 |
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Duff Looks like he didn't have Japanese ancestor.
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July 26th, 2017 | #5 | |
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Quote:
So new healthy, normal, interesting stuff has two strikes against it: a. it's new, and b. it's not massively funded and pushed by jews.
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July 26th, 2017 | #6 |
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A Quiet Passion
A major factor is in Hollywood, everyone only knows everyone else, and they tend to, as you said, do what's been tested, which is why we see remakes of TV shows over and over. I don't think there's a lot of thought in Hollywood, but that's intentional.
It's said you write what you read, and translating that to film, you make what you view. I think a lot of film types are pretty ignorant. I noticed when the allies took over Germany after WWII, they took control of the media and flooded it with US films, and so your media is essentially colonial. I went to a screenwriting conference over the weekend, and it was informative, yet I'm impressed with how single-minded most wannabe screenwriters are. Almost all of the sixty participants pitched their ideas…over and over it was guns, drugs, robbery, crime, with an occasional sic-fi idea thrown in. Kind of thoughtful on how sterile most thought is. I know my Margaret Fuller play works, because it's gone before an audience who liked it, and the appeal is there, but you can't convince the big boys. Also, one woman who was in the play liked it, but said 'we need a movie about Harriet Tubman…' which also shows how niggerized the arts have become, and the Jews are behind that. We were shown the pilot of Breaking Bad for discussion. I read the script, and thought it was very well-written and acted, but I'm a little uneasy with a TV series making a hero out of a meth dealer, although I see how his life makes him go bad…but I confess I have a strong sense of morality and justice, and puts me out of the loop. But really, since the romantic period, a creeping degeneracy in the arts has been prevalent. |
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