Set Fire To The Stars, directed and co-written by Goddard with actor Celyn Jones, is visually impressive, but also immeasurably more lyrical and thoughtful than you might be expecting. This is less of a surprise considering its subject matter: the story of Dylan Thomas’s first visit to New York (his death in the city was dramatised in the recent BBC drama A Poet in New York, with Ewen Bremner playing the same role Elijah Wood does in this film). There’s also a satisfying depth to Brinnin’s attempts to keep Thomas healthy/alive enough to perform his tour. There’s a slightly awkward message here for any reviewer. Thomas advocates feeling, instinct: acting as he pleases and infuriating Brinnin as much as he delights. Brinnin, now an academic, has been marking work by students, and is now dissecting words rather than feeling them. Essentially, what reviewers are partly meant to do to the film. Thanks for that, filmmakers. Thomas and Brinnin look and feel like a comedy double act, with Wood the overawed straight man to Jones’ mercurial man-child. The film is funny, and the presence of Kevin Eldon in the cast suggests, perhaps, a certain kind of outlandishness, but everything is played with a deadpan realism. Eldon is not playing Paul Hamilton here. Very little of the dialogue is delivered by someone who knows that it is funny, with Thomas offering a few exceptions. The strength of the performances is married to a strong script, thematically astute and subtly devastating in its own small way. The adage ‘Never meet your heroes’ springs to mind, and is immediately obvious for various reasons, but as well as the chaos that Thomas brings there are also some harsher truths unearthed during Brinnin’s upheaval, about the difficulty of a relationship with genius, and about the closeted self-importance of academia. This is all the harsher when you consider that Brinnin was no slouch, and that Thomas would eventually die in America as his health deteriorated. All in all, for a debut feature length (a new production company was formed around the making of this movie), it’s an impressive feat and has attracted an equally impressive cast who do the script justice. Even if this film doesn’t sound like your cup of tea (and a knowledge of poetry is not essential), it’s worth keeping an eye out for the names involved in getting it off the ground, and their future projects. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
