Director Terence Davies finds a soul mate in Emily Dickinson

“A Quiet Passion” is Terence Davies’ eighth feature, and the 71-year-old English native has made a stern, evocative feature on the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson, portrayed by Cynthia Nixon. Most historical biographies on film behave as tidy museum pieces, however lifelessly, while others strive for modernity at the expense of plausibility. Co-starring Jennifer Ehle and Keith Carradine, “A Quiet Passion” avoids both suggestions and the result is the latest Davies gem.

In Dickinson, writer-director Davies may have found a kind of soul mate: Just as Dickinson fought with her family, her editors and her entire world about her rightful place within that world, Davies considers himself a fortunate independent filmmaker, if a fundamentally puzzled one.

He has never made a film set in the present day, and Davies says he never will. “The problem is, I’m a technophobe. I can’t work any of this technology.” (He refers to iPhones and their various relations.) “I don’t understand the modern world. I simply don’t understand it. I’m also repelled by it. I’m repelled by the narcissism of everything. Why do you need to take a photograph of yourself when you’re out for dinner? I do think that is really dangerous. None of us are central to the universe. I just don’t understand the modern world. There’s something … dead about it. What to do with all this information? What is it for? How can you watch the news with subtitles running along the bottom of the screen?”

Nixon, currently on Broadway in a revival of “The Little Foxes,” agreed to play Dickinson for Davies nearly five years ago. She stuck with the project long enough for Davies to secure funding. He has nothing but praise for the actress, as well as for Ehle, who plays Emily’s sister, Vinnie. “Gorgeous” is his one-word review for Ehle; “lovely,” the word he chooses for Carradine.

Davies complied with the speed-round portion of our interview, regarding American vs. British actors. “The two traditions are different. The Americans are much more voluble and emotional. When that works, it’s very, very powerful. When it doesn’t, it’s just bombast. In England we’ve grown up with a much more reticent, restrained school of acting.” For Davies, much of the accepted film language, when a director galumphs from wide angle to medium shot to seesawing close-ups expressing nothing, has “ossified.”

“That sort of thing,” he says, “that’s part of a language that’s dead now.” Davies’ close-ups have a way of framing a character in a stylized studio portrait of the mind. Such close-ups, he says, intrigued him since his early films, “but I didn’t realize what they meant. If you go to a close-up, it has to tell you something different. It’s like tracking; if you track in on a subject, your feeling at the end of that track must be different from what it was at the beginning. Something has to be revealed.”

With “A Quiet Passion,” Dickinson’s flinty spirit and beguiling poet’s ear find a sympathetic interpreter in Davies. And thanks to his work with cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, the light in Davies’ latest film can best be described by the writer-director’s own favorite adjective: ravishing.