A Quiet Passion
Music Box Films | Release Date: April 14, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
78
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
8
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangApr 20, 2017
The stately rhythms of the dialogue — drawn out by the particulars of Davies’ blocking, framing and editing — become a kind of music. The effect is bewildering at first, then absorbing, then transfixing. Its purpose, in line with the loftiest ideals of poetry itself, is to clear the mind and stir the soul. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyApr 14, 2017
It is grounded, and made most exemplary, by Cynthia Nixon’s performance. Every actor in this movie is wonderful. But Nixon’s precision in portraying every particular mood of Emily — for each individual scene calls for absolute specificity — is simply spectacular. Read full review
100
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonApr 12, 2017
In his sympathetic and intelligent Dickinson biopic, A Quiet Passion, Terence Davies honors his subject by remaining true to this observation from the poet herself: "To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations." Read full review
100
Time Out LondonDave CalhounApr 3, 2017
The talk is pointed and careful in a household that savours the power and meaning of words, but it’s as much the imagery that makes this film such a painterly joy. Read full review
100
IndieWireMichael PattisonFeb 25, 2016
Given its themes and the tragic circumstances of Dickinson's life, "Passion" is a refreshingly humorous work. Its firecracker dialogue is invigorating; the assured, measured compositions are equally compelling. And in its sensitivity to intersecting conflicts related to womanhood and class, it is quietly masterful. Read full review
100
The Film StageRory O'ConnorFeb 24, 2016
The great theme of Dickinson’s life, Davies argues, is finding solace — not in religion, but in art, and A Quiet Passion itself can boast such moments of quiet catharsis. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Apr 12, 2017
What’s surprising about A Quiet Passion, given the writer-director’s own incurable melancholy, is how lively, how flat-out funny, it frequently is. The film sometimes flirts, even, with becoming a full-on comedy of manners, at least before characters start keeling over and breathing their last breaths. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony LaneApr 17, 2017
To be fair, A Quiet Passion is wittier, in its early stretches, than anyone might have foreseen, but it’s when the door closes, and the Dickinsons are alone with their trepidations, that the movie draws near to its rightful severity. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottApr 13, 2017
Mr. Davies, whose work often blends public history and private memory, possesses a poetic sensibility perfectly suited to his subject and a deep, idiosyncratic intuition about what might have made her tick. Read full review
88
Washington PostStephanie MerryMay 11, 2017
Davies is a master of the slow build, lyrically evoking the dreaminess and gravity of his subject and her verse. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldMay 4, 2017
There are moments of astonishing lyricism. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 12, 2017
No matter how you feel, we still get the poetry, stitched throughout the film and occasionally soaring above it like an uncaged bird: hard, far-seeing, and waiting for the day it will be understood. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversApr 12, 2017
Cynthia Nixon is simply magnificent as Dickinson, finding the sharp wit and searching mind of a woman out of step with the codes and formalities of her time. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineCarson LundApr 12, 2017
A Quiet Passion's accomplishment is in fleshing out the stark context behind Emily Dickinson's ethereal words. Read full review
80
Little White LiesSophie Monks KaufmanDec 1, 2021
Strengths lie in this film’s commitment to understanding an extraordinary, reclusive woman, its weaknesses in a dogged fidelity to relaying the small events of each passing year. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghMay 4, 2017
Director Terence Davies dispenses of any gaudy romantic trappings and makes something much more beautiful in A Quiet Passion, a delicate and measured drama that plumbs the depths of the poet’s strange heart and the agony of her intelligence. Read full review
80
The GuardianAndrew PulverFeb 24, 2016
It is Davies’ ability to invest even the most apparently-humdrum moments with some form of intense radiance that sustains his film. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreMay 23, 2017
It’s a movie that doesn’t focus as much on the creation of the work as it does on a fresh view of the woman who made it. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonMay 11, 2017
Perhaps best known for the HBO series “Sex and the City,” Nixon deftly balances wit and melancholy. And Ehle is empathy personified. This is a film of subtle beauty. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Nathalie AtkinsonApr 13, 2017
Sharp drawing-room repartee interrogates the same decorum and morality as her poems, although the frequently epigrammatic dialogue is mannered, even for a period film. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinApr 13, 2017
The final scenes are potent enough to save the movie. Read full review
70
Screen DailyLee MarshallFeb 24, 2016
If A Quiet Passion grows in stature as we watch, it’s partly thanks to Cynthia Nixon, whose account of a witty, intelligent, rebellious but also reticent and emotionally confused woman takes the edge off Davies’ sometimes grating formalism. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesMay 3, 2017
A Quiet Passion’s manneredness overwhelmed me at times, but it is very effective – chilling, even – in its charting of one woman’s disappointed journey to the rhetorical coda of her own life: “Why has the world become so ugly?” Read full review
60
TheWrapDan CallahanApr 12, 2017
The degree of difficulty here is steep, and Davies has not been entirely successful in making Dickinson’s milieu come to full and convincing life. Read full review
60
EmpireJohn NugentApr 10, 2017
Thoughtful, emotional and often surprisingly funny, Terence Davies offers a rich if inconsistent portrait of a unique poet long deserving of a big-screen study. Read full review
60
CineVueLucy PopescuApr 10, 2017
While Davies vividly captures the period's austerity and Dickinson's despair at being misunderstood, there are a few too many scenes of repressed emotion followed by wild outbursts of grief. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungFeb 24, 2016
Despite a warmly interacting cast that includes Jennifer Ehle as Emily’s sister and Keith Carradine as her lion-maned, lionized father, and a valiant effort on the part of Nixon and Davies to externalize the poet’s inner demons in emotional, high-tension scenes, the film can’t escape an underlying static quality that extinguishes the flame before it can get burning. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoMay 4, 2017
The film refuses to soft-pedal Dickinson’s heartbreaking descent into bitterness and near-misanthropy, but sometimes operates with a heavy-handedness that’s certainly at odds with her poetry. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerApr 28, 2017
The Emily of this movie seems to survive primarily to take everyone in her orbit to task. Davies is holding her up as the indomitable spirit of genius – a woman who suffers fools not at all. Read full review
42
The PlaylistJessica KiangFeb 24, 2016
It's an overwrought, stagey muddle that suggests that Davies, ever a-quiver on the extreme high end of the sensitivity meter anyway, has quivered right off it and plunged into the depths of bathos. Read full review
40
VarietyGuy LodgeFeb 24, 2016
[Davies'] most mannered and least fulfilling work to date, A Quiet Passion boasts meticulous craft and ornate verbiage in abundance, but confines Cynthia Nixon’s melancholia-stricken performance as arguably America’s greatest poet in an emotional straitjacket of variously arch storytelling tones. Read full review
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