Ellington

However much is known about the life of 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson (and the mind that created nearly 2000 poems, among them some of the most challenging and respected works in American writing), it can be certainly said that a far greater amount of information remains a mystery. At the outset of the quirky documentary "Loaded Gun: Life, and Death, and Dickinson," director Jim Wolpaw, who also narrates, readily admits that his film did not find (and thus does not offer) any succinct answers about who Dickinson was. "Loaded Gun" will be screened in the Gertrude C. Ford Academic Complex at Millsaps College on Monday, March 7 at 7:30 p.m. as part of the South Carolina Arts Commission's Southern Circuit Film Series tour of independent films.

The title "Loaded Gun" is gleaned from one of Dickinson's most famous (and confusing) poems, which opens, "My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun / In Corners – till a Day / The Owner passed – identified / And carried Me away." These lines are recited numerous times—by numerous people—in Wolpaw's film, though their meaning is never precisely unearthed (perhaps because the voice who brought them to us is still such an enigma). By all accounts, Dickinson was a recluse for most of her life, rarely or never leaving her large Massachusetts home. Content to devote her days to domestic tasks, Dickinson's poetry was mostly a secret until after her death, when her family discovered and opted to publish it.

Wolpaw seems to have begun his Dickinson project with traditional, scholarly objectives, poring over standard biographical and archival material, interviewing professors versed in Dickinson's life and work, and intensely studying the poems themselves. "But my central character wasn't coming into focus," Wolpaw laments in his narration. What follows is an orthodox, freewheeling examination of Dickinson's past via the use of a group of amateur actresses. Wolpaw organizes a casting call for the character of Emily Dickinson, as if he were preparing for a dramatized biopic about the poet. He posits to the young women an assortment of questions, which they answer in character: "Why don't you go outside?" or "Do you have a problem with God?" and even "What do you consider to be a 'wild night'?"

This self-conscious manner in which the film approaches its subject takes a while to get used to, and it could be argued to be an exercise in futility (one of Wolpaw's scholarly interviewees hilariously chastises his decision to hold these "Emily auditions"). It is certainly an interesting approach, one that seems to assign a certain timelessness to Dickinson's pain and pathos, even though it might be hard for some to take it seriously. Wolpaw also depicts an apparent subculture of Dickinson devotees, from a rock band who matches her poetry to electric guitars, to a man who has a tattoo of the poet's most famous photo across his entire back, to stage actress Julie Harris, whose readings of Dickinson's poems are probably the single best thing about Wolpaw's amusing movie.

You won't know much more about Emily Dickinson by the end of "Loaded Gun" than you did when the film began. Perhaps she will simply remain one of literature's great puzzles, a strange and misunderstood character that will occasionally be indulged by a talented analyst like Wolpaw (along with producer and editor Steve Gentile). While some documentaries passionately pursue a concrete idea, perhaps even a thesis, "Loaded Gun" is merely an exploration, a fascinating landscape of poem readings and possibilities that illuminates its subject without assigning conclusions to it.