Wild Nights with Emily

Between Wild Nights With Emily and Apple TV’s Dickinson, I’m so here for this changing of the narrative around Emily Dickinson. No more portrayals of her as a depressed spinster. Dickinson was a queer woman in a long-term, loving relationship and according to Wild Nights with Emily, had a pretty wicked sense of humour as well.

Wild Nights With Emily is a retelling of Emily Dickinson’s life with a focus on her long-term relationship with her husband’s wife, Susan. The film shows how they had been together since teenage girls and as adults, lived next door to each other. Susan is portrayed as the main muse behind Dickinson’s poetry. Susan also acts as a would-be publisher for Dickinson though often not very successfully. The film posits that Dickinson’s poetry was ahead of its time thus why she achieved minimal success during her lifetime. The story uses the framing of Mabel Todd posthumously publishing and discussing Dickinson’s life and poetry. Yet when Todd presents her take on Dickinson, the film will flashback and prove her assertions wrong.

What’s great about Wild Nights With Emily is that it very much lets you know this is not the definitive take on Emily Dickinson. I think more biopics should weave into their narrative that this version of events is merely one interpretation. Wild Nights aims to change the narrative around Dickinson and reclaim her as a queer voice. And it successfully does this and crafts a great version of her life all the while maintaining that this is all speculation and one interpretation of her work.

Conversely, I do also think it’s great that the film does diligence in depicting how much Emily’s story has been misrepresented. It’s initially funny seeing Mabel Todd get the details of Emily’s life and inspiration so wrong. But at the end, it hits hard when Emily is dead and we see her make the specific choice to erase Susan’s name and references to queerness in Emily’s poetry. The film shows a very literal version of how historical queerness is erased. I love the fact that the film sets out to undo that.

But within trying to undo a faulty narrative and craft a new one, Wild Nights made the delightful choice to do so with comedy. I’d love to see more comedy biopics or historical films. Wild Nights definitely takes inspiration from Drunk History but tones it down enough to be something that can support a feature film length story. The humour really makes the film and Emily come alive.

While there’s definitely questions of what’s true and what’s speculation or embellishment, the romance between Emily and Susan is incredibly sweet. I’m always a sucker for stories where committed couples have know each other since childhood. And it is wonderful to see how committed Susan and Emily are. They have their disagreements in the film but there’s never any threat this couple will break up. It’s a great alternative to Apple TV’s Dickinson which portrays a young, hot Emily Dickinson. Youth is often overvalued in society and I like that Wild Nights showed an older version of Emily and one who is still deeply loved and sexually active as well as creative.

Wild Nights with Emily really delighted me. I love a good comedy biopic and this one also has a genuine theme and mission behind its comedy. Molly Shannon is great as Emily Dickinson and she deserves more lead roles. This film is a great and aggressively queer celebration of Emily Dickinson and her work.

Overall rating: 9/10

Other WLW films in similar genres