F/F Friday: Wild Nights with Emily

[osprey_archer]

Despite my love of Emily Dickinson, I put off watching Wild Nights with Emily because some of the reviews gave me pause. But it came to Kanopy last week, and I’ve got access to Kanopy through my library, so of course I had to watch it, and I’m glad I did because I found it for the most part delightful.

The movie has two main stories. First, there’s the story of Emily Dickinson’s lifelong love affair with her sister-in-law, Sue Dickinson, who married Emily’s brother Austin (the movie argues) in order to remain close to Emily: Sue and Austin build their house right next door to the house where Emily lives, and Emily and Sue wear a path through their backyards sending notes back and forth by means of Sue’s daughter.

Second, there’s the frame story, in which Austin’s mistress Mabel Loomis Todd gives a speech about Emily Dickinson’s work, which Todd edited and arranged for publication after Dickinson’s death, while obscuring her own illicit connection to the family. Why was she over at Emily Dickinson’s house all the time? (To conduct her illicit affair with Austin.) To play piano for the reclusive Emily, of course!

Emily and Sue’s love is the heart of the movie, of course, but I also got a lot of enjoyment out of Mabel’s sections. In this telling, she’s a sort of confidence trickster, always putting herself at the center of Emily’s story and keeping just a step ahead of her marks as they begin to notice puzzling discrepancies in her story. Why was she the only possible editor for Emily’s work if she never even met Emily face to face? Well, uh, because Emily almost never saw anyone face to face! Because she was a reclusive spinster who had never known love!

She’s not a nice person, but it’s exhilarating to watch her spin this spiderweb around her audience. You can see why her story of Emily Dickinson took root, even though in later years Sue’s daughter Martha (who acted as messenger girl for much of Emily and Sue’s correspondence) gave speeches about Emily and Sue’s closeness. Mabel got in first, and moreover, Mabel is a showman. All Martha has is the truth on her side.

I did have a couple of quibbles with the movie. The first is that the actresses playing young Emily and Sue sometimes struggle with the dialogue: they sound a little wooden, an effect which is more noticeable because the actresses for middle-aged Emily and Sue make the 19th century cadences sound so natural.

The other quibble (and this is the reason I hesitated to watch the movie in the first place) is that the movie is so intent on positioning Sue as Emily’s most important, indeed practically sole supporter, that it sometimes gives other people short shrift. This is more noticeable in the portrayal of Helen Hunt Jackson, whom the movie portrays as a rival to Emily, a poet whose conventional verses find easy acceptance in comparison to Emily’s more modern poetry. There’s no hint in the movie of the fact that the real-life Dickinson and Jackson knew each other from school, and Jackson in fact urged Dickinson to publish.

(I’m also not sure if the movie’s portrayal of Emily’s sister Lavinia is accurate, but it is eccentric and hilarious, so it didn’t give me quite the same feeling that they were committing a character assassination.)

But overall, I really enjoyed the movie. More period pieces like this, please!

Comments

[oracne]

I'd been interested in this, so thanks for the review!

[osprey_archer]

I figured this one would be Of Interest to many people on my flist!

[kore]

I remember the trailer for this one looked good! even if I kept mixing it up with Quiet Passion and I think one other movie.

[osprey_archer]

I know there's also been a Dickinson series lately, so maybe that's what you're thinking of? That one looks like it's anachronistic in a way that will only frustrate me.

[kore]

Maybe that was it! Yeah, a lot of critics loved it, but it seemed tailor made Not For Moi.

[asakiyume]

OMG thank GOODNESS for this little comment thread! I was looking at this entry and thinking, I guess, of the series, and thinking really? really? because the series looked So Terrible. So just now I went and looked at a trailer for this film--and realized I'd never heard anything about it, never seen a trailer, nothing! And it looks charming and NOW your review makes sense! I should never have doubted! I need to check out the film now!

[osprey_archer]

There seems to have been a little Dickinson boom in recent years! Which is great, but it can be hard to keep track of which part is which... I feel this way about all the recent adaptations of Little Women, too, although Greta Gerwig's seems to have surged head and shoulders about the rest to become THE recent adaptation.

[radiantfracture]

I adore this film, though I didn't know about Helen Hunt Jackson.

[osprey_archer]

I only knew about Helen Hunt Jackson because I read a Dickinson biography a few years ago. Apparently she scolded Dickinson about being so reticent to publish: the world needed as many women writers as it could get!

[sovay]

Apparently she scolded Dickinson about being so reticent to publish: the world needed as many women writers as it could get!

That inclines me strongly in the direction of liking Helen Hunt Jackson.

[kore]

I didn't either really, but damn, she sounds awesome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Hunt_Jackson

[sovay]

the movie is so intent on positioning Sue as Emily’s most important, indeed practically sole supporter, that it sometimes gives other people short shrift.

That sort of over-argument always bugs me. I am glad it is not a movie-killer.

[osprey_archer]

I find that sort of thing so irritating that I put off watching the movie for months, but in the end it's a fairly small part of the movie, and it does everything else so well that I was like "Well fine I suppose every movie gets ONE bad decision."

[landofnowhere]

Huh, I'd never heard about Mabel Loomis Todd, what an interesting woman!

[osprey_archer]

Right? It takes some chutpah to be like "It's 1892 and I'm going to get my lover's sister's poems published and just sort of skate right on by the question of my relationship with the family."

[kore]

I think Mabel was the one who started a lot of the fanon (LOL) about Emily being a total recluse, too, because when she visited Emily didn't want to come down to see her, so Mabel played the piano!

[osprey_archer]

Yeah! In the movie she's telling her audience "The reason I never met her is... because... she was a RECLUSE! Yeah!", while the camera cuts to shots of Mabel and Austin screwing in the living room while Emily, upstairs, rolls her eyes and goes back into her room.

[kore]

Was the book you read Lives Like Loaded Guns? That had ALL the Mabel details in it.

[osprey_archer]

I read My Wars Are Laid Away in Books, which IIRC didn't have too many Mabel details. (It also was entirely too dismissive of the idea of Emily & Sue's romance, IMO.)

But I've toured Dickinson's house + the Evergreens, the house next door where Sue & Austin lived, (and also attended a talk at the house) (and the first time I went there, the house was closed so I walked around it like a yearning phantom), so over time I've picked up a certain amount of detail about them all.

[kore]

(and the first time I went there, the house was closed so I walked around it like a yearning phantom)

AWW.

[asakiyume]

We saw this last night! Again, thanks to you 💕 We liked it a lot! I really liked when they would pause and do a poem--some of those were really effective--the one about pain, and the one after she dies, where it's her and the Black guy talking to each other. And I don't know if Lavinia was really that eccentric either, but I laughed and laughed in the scene where Austin is trying to induce her to get Emily to meet Mabel.

I think--and I only feel this way from the vantage point of the following morning; I didn't feel this way last night--the only real flaw I saw (aside from yes: the wooden line delivery of young Emily and young Susan) was that it flattens out Emily's concerns in life to just the reception of her poetry in the world and her relationship with Susan. Those things are definitely very important, and obviously a movie about the relationship is going to focus on the relationship, but I think if they had expanded just a little on her reactions to things like the death of her nephew or her thoughts about religion .... I think they thought that by just bringing those things up, they were showing that they were significant, but I think I would have liked a little more of Emily demonstrating engagement/sorrow/thoughtfulness toward them. ... Along those lines, I loved her three hours with Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

I really liked learning about the role of Emily's niece in bringing to light the relationship between Emily and Susan, and Wakanomori and I really want to get our hands on the 1914 book by her that gets mentioned at the end of the film.

[osprey_archer]

YES, I loved the scene where Austin is trying to convince Lavinia to get Emily to meet Mabel, and Lavinia's just stonewalling him in the most eccentric way possible. "Does Mabel know Emily is a person?" Lavinia asks. And also just the sheer fact that she named her cat after her sister.

Also YES the Higginson meeting was great. He's so overwhelmed! The part where he answers one of Emily's comments with an inane pleasantry and she gets a puzzled look on her face like "What is he SAYING, what does this MEAN," when really it means nothing, he's just filling the air because clearly his brain has stopped working.

I agree though that the movie could have engaged a little more with the non-Sue parts of Emily's life - particularly religion, because the religious influences in New England at that time were so pervasive and had such a big (although unorthodox) effect on her poetry.

That book by Emily's niece must be fascinating! (Is this it: The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime? The preface begins "The romantic friendship of my Aunt Emily Dickinson and her "Sister Sue" extended from girlhood until death.")

[asakiyume]

That must be it! Excellent--I'll show Wakanomori!

[lokifan]

This is more noticeable in the portrayal of Helen Hunt Jackson, whom the movie portrays as a rival to Emily, a poet whose conventional verses find easy acceptance in comparison to Emily’s more modern poetry. There’s no hint in the movie of the fact that the real-life Dickinson and Jackson knew each other from school, and Jackson in fact urged Dickinson to publish.

>.< That's definitely annoying. But it still sounds great - and the conversation between the makers of this film vs A Quiet Place def made me think this one sounded better/more accurate!

[osprey_archer]

I haven't seen A Quiet Passion, so I can't speak to a comparison between the two, but I definitely enjoyed this one!