Wild Nights With Emily

Emily Dickinson is in vogue now. There was a terrific movie about her a few years ago called A Quiet Passion, and there's a series on Hulu series called Dickinson starring Hailee Steinfeld. And then there's Wild Nights With Emily, which takes a look at her from the queer perspective.

Written and directed by Madeline Olnek, whose films are all about lesbians, the film takes the stance that Dickinson was in love with her sister-in-law, and that the two had a sexual relationship. She also tries to demythologize her, portraying her not as a nutty recluse. Whether any of this is true is up for debate.

Molly Shannon plays Dickinson as an adult, Susan Ziegler is Sue. They are depicted as teens when they fall in love, and Shannon is crushed when Ziegler marries her brother, Austin (played by Kevin Seal, whom I haven't seen since he was an MTV VJ about thirty years ago). When Dickinson's father built a house right next door for Austin and Sue, Emily becomes a frequent guest, and Olnek is clear that their relationship was sexual.

The film is narrated by Mabel Loomis Todd, who was the first editor of Dickinson's poems, but is presented as something as a villain. She never saw Dickinson, and the film states this is because the latter was disgusted by her affair with Austin. The film posits that Dickinson did go out and meet people--she attended a party attended by Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom she admired, only to find out that he was a terrible public speaker.

The tone of the film is comic. There is a funny scene when Todd (played by Amy Seimetz) plays the piano in Shannon's parlor, while the poet is upstairs writing. She plays "The Yellow Rose Of Texas," which Shannon hears. There is an old joke, that many of Dickinson's poems can be set to that tune. Another scene shows Dickinson watching funerals from her window. "Funerals were her entertainment," Todd says.

After seeing the film I had to talk to my friend, a college professor who is an expert on Dickinson. She says that there is no proof that there was a sexual relationship between Emily and Sue, and that there was a type of bond between women in the Victorian era who may today be termed asexual, or at least did not like men, but were not necessarily lesbians. It is true that Todd erased the name Sue from Dickinson's poems and letters.

I sort of liked this movie, even though it really exists as an attempt for the LGBT community to claim Dickinson as one of their own. Because the tone is comic it bounces along, and of course there are the snatches of her poetry.