{"id":1090,"date":"2017-05-15T14:44:10","date_gmt":"2017-05-15T18:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2017-05-15T14:44:10","modified_gmt":"2017-05-15T18:44:10","slug":"the-missing-question-in-a-quiet-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2017\/05\/the-missing-question-in-a-quiet-passion.html","title":{"rendered":"The missing question in A Quiet Passion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I was surprised to identify, in the placid strings that conclude the extraordinary film A Quiet Passion<\/em>, a bit of decomposed Ives:\u00a0 the action dissolves into The Unanswered Question<\/em>, stripped of trumpet and winds.<\/p>\n

What is left of The Unanswered Question<\/em> when the question and increasingly agitated answers are removed? \u00a0\u201cThe Silence of the\u00a0Druids\u2014who Know, See and Hear Nothing,\u201d in Ives\u2019 words, or, as he also put it, \u201cUndisturbed Solitude.\u201d\u00a0 Musically speaking, a muted string orchestra playing a slowly unfolding progression in G Major.<\/p>\n

At first I was taken aback that the music would be used without the foreground material that defines it \u2013 again, what is The Unanswered Question<\/em> without the question?\u00a0 And isn\u2019t that the wrong approach to ending a film about Emily Dickinson, whose work is chock full of probing questions?<\/p>\n

But the music also made sense to me.<\/p>\n

I never judge fictionalized biographies by how true they are to what actually happened. If I did, I would have to dismiss Shakespeare\u2019s history plays, which would be a pointless loss. \u00a0It\u2019s not the job of any work of art to reproduce, though reproduction may be a means to an end.\u00a0 A film, a play, a poem has to follow its own logic.<\/p>\n

In A Quiet Passion<\/em>, the main character is caught between her need for approval and her need for the \u201cundisturbed solitude\u201d represented by Ives\u2019 strings.\u00a0 At the end of the film, her questioning is gone, and all that remains is silence \u2013 of druids as well as poet.\u00a0 In that sense, the musical conclusion makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n

The film manages to create a fully realized world of closed-off colors, drawn-out illnesses and pent-up passions.\u00a0 I was entranced by its ability to beautifully explore topics that most films would shy away from: artistic creation, a main character who is often unpleasant, extended death-bed scenes.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But it also has some painfully stilted scenes, scenes where something went missing between script and shooting.\u00a0\u00a0 In that sense, the music that ends the film is awkwardly appropriate: beautiful music with something missing to cap off a beautiful film with something missing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was surprised to identify, in the placid strings that conclude the extraordinary film A Quiet Passion, a bit of decomposed Ives:\u00a0 the action dissolves into The Unanswered Question, stripped of trumpet and winds. What is left of The Unanswered Question when the question and increasingly agitated answers are removed? \u00a0\u201cThe Silence of the\u00a0Druids\u2014who Know, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1092,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions\/1092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}