Artistic pursuits confined to the page are never an easy or inherently cinematic activity to portray on screen. Given the difficult task of portraying the solitary act of writing, films about poetry lend themselves to directors attempting a visual grace and beauty. The best of these films is when a director has an aesthetic sensibility similar to their subject.
But, the directors also know how to take an audience down the tumult of their inner life. Finding grooves and beats to embellish the poet's voice — beyond having their poems narrated — is the toughest task. Directors like Jane Campion and Terence Davies have the formal discipline to make films about poets blossom. While not the kind of film with the richest history, these are the ten best.
10 Kill Your Darlings
An origin story of sorts, before the long-haired, bearded Buddha of the counter culture and beacon of hope for the beat generation began picking the brains of the collective underbelly of a social conscious, Allen Ginsberg was just another ambitious student. Kill Your Darlings aptly portrays the college life of one of America's greatest poets (in a loving performance from Daniel Radcliffe) as his desires get entangled with a vibrantly chaotic Lucien Carr (Dane Dehaan) as the two seek a romance with one another. It's a fitting story that illuminates the origins of what made Allen Ginsberg such a radical figure in the literary scene.
9 Neruda
A film’s vision married to the romantic unity he saw in life, Neruda is a thrillingly elusive portrait of the famed poet and thinker Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco). Pablo Larrain directs the film with a visual flair that is engaged with the poetry and the political tumult Neruda dealt with when rightfully calling out his country's increasingly alarming move towards dictatorship. The film delicately balances the mystery of Neruda’s words and work while also putting him on the run from his government, turning it into a romantic thriller.
8 Before Night Falls
Julian Schnabel has made a career of defining artists' works as intimate portrayals of the interiority of artists struggling to impress their vision while also abstaining from hagiography. In Before Night Falls, Schnabel takes his painterly visuals to reflect and depict the life of the author and naturally-born poet Reinaldo Arenas. In an Oscar-nominated performance, Javier Bardem carries an ethereal gravitas to Arenas, a man born into a country that does not want him because of his queerness. As he battles exile and finally finds a home when he escapes to the United States. Before Night Falls is a sweeping journey that shows the battle for life and art at its most extreme.
7 Howl
The second entry about Allen Ginsberg on this list (a testament to his impact), but this one focused more on the power of his words and the aftermath of being a visionary in a time when America was still grappling with the shift in social consciousness. Howl focuses on the titular poem and how it sent shockwaves for being a moving work of art by some but as a danger to those in power. The film shifts between a docu-style approach, with James Franco as Ginsberg as he battles the obscenity charges that put him on trial and why the “Howl” is considered one of the greatest poems ever written. Howl is a peculiar portrait of an artist reaching the height of his powers.
6 A Quiet Passion
In the vastly unsung oeuvre of British filmmaker Terence Davies is his loving and delicately melancholic look at the life of Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion. With beautiful renderings of her poetry read by a never-better Cynthia Nixon, Davies conveys the majesty of her verse and the power of her voice. Davies overlays themes of her interior life, the patriarchy’s weaponized silence, and creates eerily sweeping montages to reveal hidden meaning in her life. A Quiet Passion is an ode, unconventional in its form, to the life of a poet.
5 Bright Star
One of Jane Campion's great strengths as a filmmaker is her ability to shift aesthetic disciplines from film to film. Campion finds the power of restraint in telling a love story as it only increases the profundity of the poetry and romance. Bright Star isn't only about the poetry of one of Britain's great romantics — John Keats (Ben Whishaw) — but the love story that enthralled him so with Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Campion gives equal measure to both by having the famed muse a sense of power as well. A fitting film to employ the beauty and artistry of Keats' long-lived poetry.
4 The Color of Pomegranates
An unconventional biopic in the way it depicts the life of 18th Century poet, Sayat-Nova, director Sergei Paranjov pines the verses of his subject to create a wholly unique and surreal rendering of a life lived in poetry. A work that is deeply indebted to the residue of Sayat-Nova’s psyche, the director finds the peculiar wavelength and stays there. Transitioning from scene to scene like chapter renditions of a dance with aging, The Color of Pomegranates is a testament to the power of art and poetry.
3 Benediction
Benediction is a masterclass in misery and sorrow as art. Terrence Davies is no stranger to making the act of poetry a journey to revelation. Davies endows us with Jack Lowden, who played Siegfried Sassoon, a famed World War I poet whose psyche altered after experiencing the horror of trench warfare. Standing morally opposed to the war, Lowden isolates himself as an objector to the war structures but lives in the shadows as he has affairs with other men. Sassoon lived a life in secret. The end results in one crushing and devastating final shot as Lowden sees the end of his life right in front of him.
2 I Am Not Your Negro
A film packed with a ferocious heart, a powerful message, and questions asked about the unresolved crimes of a country that would like to omit its history, I Am Not Your Negro is a devastatingly effective film about the grace and urgency of James Baldwin's voice. Done through the filter of an unfinished manuscript, director Raoul Peck uses Baldwin's words to paint a portrait of not only a country, but also of a man who constantly reckons with his identity and what it means to be Black in America. A vivid, painful story of a country that is ill-equipped to have tough conversations. I Am Not Your Negro is one of the best films in recent memory detailing the inner workings of a brilliant literary mind and one that gets to the core of his humanity.
1 Paterson
Not the blue-collar martyrdom of union workers sacrificing their bodies for fair wages, but Paterson embarks on depicting the heroic moments of finding poetry in the daily interactions of a bus driver. Zen master Jim Jarmusch's directorial style finds the sublime in the minute details of the dry, boring parts that make up a day. Adam Driver stars as the bus driver named Paterson, who aspires to be a writer and poet. His performance is decorated in subtlety as he attempts to find what's beautiful and bare in what some may consider a soul-crushing job. While in a town of little privacy, everyone seems to know each other. It’s a feat of gorgeous filming, where Jarmusch takes a relatively small, minuscule production and creates a heartfelt universal story.