| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 06/25/2008 : 14:20:36
The Edge of Love
I adore the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, but I have a feeling from what I know of him, he wouldn't be topping my dinner invitation list. Maybe a ten minute conversation just to say I'd met him, but a friend, or heavenforfend a lover? Not on your nelly!
Which is the way I feel about poet Dylan Thomas. Now in my curious life I've been attracted to and had flings, affairs with, even marriages to a string of cads. So who am I to judge Thomas's irrepressible wife Caitlin or childhood sweetheart Vera Phillips - both of whom maintained a lifelong passion for him, drunk or sober, rich or poor, present or absent. But it might have been at least interesting to understand why.
But this failure of a film refuses to deal with what might be motive and presents pretty pictures in a kind of connect-the-dots fashion. Neither director John Mayberry - so much more successful with his tale of the strange passions of Frances Bacon - nor Sharman Macdonald, successful Scottish playwright and mum of star Keira Knightley - neither of them extends these characters into the third dimension.
So the film meanders through the Blitz, through meetings and re-meetings, through moments of wooing and moments of war and moments of childbirth and moments of friendship until there's a big pile of moments piled higgeldy-piggeldy upon each other until they all come tumbling down in an unsatisfying heap.
For an experienced playwright, some of Macdonald's dialogue reaches heights of pretension that neither illuminate the soul of a poet nor contrast it with the clay-footed man.
Accents aside the actors struggle against the material, acquitting themselves rather well. Sadly, Mayberry's direction combines some framings of brilliance smothered out by cliche and heartlessness.
You get the impression that Matthew Rhys as the poet is waiting for a scene to come along that will demand more of him than mere surface mundanity. He's intelligent enough to know intelligence ought to be there, but is trapped by a script that takes talent as read. The real interest, surely, in a film about Thomas's relationships is the fact that he was a great poet. If it's merely a catalogue of this meeting and then that one, these could be any three people. You may recognize Rhys from his portrayal of Kevin, the gay brother in Brothers and Sisters. For all its sentimentality, that series provided him with the kind of acting challenges this film so sorely lacks.
Knightley still tends to rely on her winning smile, but she's finding some real depth these days, and you don't watch her with that constant desire to slap her.
Sienna Miller gets better every time I see her. She's got an ability to convey intelligence and pain with wit and physical abandonment. She shines onscreen. For some reason her former real-life relationship with Rhys seems to serve her better in this film than it does him.
The film's not quite boring enough to be worthy, but it escapes only by inches.
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| ChocolateLady |
Posted - 06/26/2008 : 06:07:04
Well, while Dylan Thomas's most famous poem is probably the only modern day Villanelle to have ever gained any popularity, his poetry is usually a bit too harsh and morbid for my taste. Still, I would have wanted to see this movie, but now I wonder...
Thanks. |
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