A Quiet Passion

"What sets the film drastically off-balance is its contrastingly finicky impulse to paint Dickinson as one of the rapier wits of her generation."

"It displays an urgent outpouring of pent-up creative energy from a director well advanced in his career but tapping into ideas, impulses, and talents that somehow have been kept under wraps throughout his decades of artistic activity."

"The Sunset Song director’s film about the reclusive American poet overcomes the challenge of her closed, interior life, with the help of a great performance by Cynthia Nixon."

"Davies doesn’t shrink from the challenges this darkened mood poses for his audience."

"I can't think of another director with the sensibility to put it on screen."

"The film can't escape an underlying static quality that extinguishes the flame before it can get burning."

"The film’s deep sympathy for Emily is unmistakable, but it is so stylised that I wished I was watching Nixon on stage in a one-woman play instead – and at times it felt as if I was."