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After a few minutes of kissing, interspersed with joyful gossip about the guests below, Susan pauses.
We should go downstairs, she says with a trace of sadness.
I want to stay here, on the coats, says Emily.
Its one of many such scenes in the funny, sexy, bold new film from writer-directorMadeleine Olnek.
So I was confused and completely intrigued by OlneksWild Nights: Who was this carefree, queer Emily?
It turns out, as Olnek tells me, shed been hiding in plain sight this whole time.
Smith has devoted most of her career to studying Emily Dickinson.
Smith found the subject of her book almost by accident.
But in the process of attempting to read copies of every letter Emily had written, Smith got distracted.
They just thought she was the nice, young wife of a faculty member at Amherst College.
They didnt understand her stakes in spinning a certain kind of story about Emily.
Just as Olnek eventually did, Smith found the film to be miserable.
I was like,Holy shit I cant stand this, Smith says, laughing.
And your vision and mine are very, very different from one another.
I thought,I just dont want to have a huge fight with him right here.
Comportment aside, Smith was angry.
Because I knew that hes a gay director, she says.
And [Daviess movie] seemed to me kind of homophobic.
But you and I both know that a lot of gay people have internalized homophobia.
So I point-blank asked him.
We were staying in the same hotel, and we got on the elevator at the same time.
He said, You really didnt like my movie, did you?
And I said, I didnt say I didnt like it, Terence.
And I just repeated that we had different visions.
But I said, By the way, Im just curious about you reading her letters.
How do you square the fact that she wrote Susan Dickinson far more than she wrote anybody else?
And he looks at me and says, Oh, I didnt have time to read the letters.
One of the major differences betweenA Quiet PassionandWild Nights,Smith says,is that Olnek did her homework.
If youre gonna make a movie like this, I think you should do your homework.
Nonetheless, Olnek has already faced naysayers.
And really angry responses, like, Shes making this up, Olnek says.
I feel like [the real] story has just been hiding in plain sight.
The Lavender Scare was at full tilt, explains Smith of the books public rejection.
Its just good old homophobia.
But what separates Dickinsons from other peoples is that Dickinson is very self-conscious about what she says to Susan.
Many scholars believe these constitute proof that Emily was interested exclusively in men.
Or at the very least, in menas well aswomen.
I hope you will be not be convinced by those who portray Emily Dickinson only as a lesbian.
After studying these letters intensively, Smith believesthe Lord lettersare less full-fledged correspondence and more illegible scraps.
As for the Master Letters, well, Smith says those are Emilys attempt at epistolary fiction.
(Shes not the first scholar to argue this.)
I add a kiss, shyly, lest there is somebody there!
Dont let them see,willyou Susie?
She was what she was.
He has a very fixed idea about her and didnt want to learn more (evidently).
But that he didnt read her letters astonishes me.
But do we have to use the wordlesbian?
Theres still some who are threatened by that, says Smith.
And theyre also threatened by their intellectual companionship.
She pauses for a moment.
Ill just say it: I think a lot of men in particular dont like that.
And the characteristic of being reclusive was one that was easily attached to a woman poet at the time.
We lose her humanity, not understanding how she worked, how she lived her life.
Emily Dickinson did not die miserable and alone as Terence Davies would have you think, says Olnek.
That almost seems like the price she paid to get to write this way.
Who would want that?
What young person would want that?
She lived on her own terms, which is different than living crazy.
Daviess fixed idea about Emily is that she was writing out of lack, says Smith.
The record shows that she was writing out of abundance.
