Emily Dickinson: A Certain Slant of Light

Plot Summary

Julie Harris (Academy Awardﾮ and eleven time Emmyﾮ nominee) takes viewers into Emily Dickinson's everyday world in a small New England town to couple and contrast facts about the poet with her extraordinary, original insights. Dickinson led a reclusive life in her father's mansion in Amherst, Massachusetts and wrote almost all of her remaining work inside his house. From cellar to cupola, this film invokes her 'certain slant of light,' her real and imagined perspectives. The paradox of the poet at home with limitless imagination is announced early in her stunning poem, 'The Brain is Wider than the Sky.' To complete the portrait, the film visits surrounding locations including Amherst College, Mount Holyoke Seminary (now College), the town cemetery next door to her childhood home and captures the commanding views from the shores of the Connecticut River.