“How much trouble can one poet be?” From the outset, Set Fire to the Stars is under no misconception about the true nature of its subject. Dylan Thomas was a troublesome drunk whose reputation both as a wordsmith and an inebriate preceded him. All too often, biopics attempt a holistic view of a famous figure, charting the narrative of their life entire. To Set Fire‘s credit, it presumes no complete, glossy view of the bawdy, drunken poet. Instead, director Andy Goddard and co-writer/star Celyn Jones offer a brief vignette of Thomas’s life in the form of his first speaking tour of America in 1950. Their portrait is a much more realistic and non-romanticized portrayal of the infamous handful than the likes of The Edge of Love but no less guilty of worshiping Thomas.
Filmed in a sharply contrasting black-and-white courtesy of cinematographer Chris Seager, Set Fire is all about visuals. Thomas’ life in no way resembles comedy, but Celyn Jones’s paunchy inhabitation of the in-fact wiry man of letters opens up the performance to a degree of physical comedy. And the contrast of the bombastic, womanizing poet with his handler, diminutive and unassuming poetry professor, John Malcolm Brinnin (Elijah Wood, again, against historic type), is the core of the film. The visuals very literally illustrate Thomas’s larger-than-life association with Brinnin, who falls into the trap of over-estimating his hero and, naturally, has those lofty ideals torn to shreds. The challenge for Brinnin and the audience is to reconcile Thomas the man with Thomas the poet. The Yale visit, which sees Thomas vomit backstage only to give a sonorous reading of his works afterward, comes closest to encapsulating those two selves.
Chain-smoking his way through Thomas-induced anxieties, Brinnin has very little to counter Thomas’s proclivity for heavy drinking except Superman comics and candy. That Thomas is a man-child is never in question. It is an intrinsic fact of the film. He even goes out of his way to offend his hosts with dirty limericks. Both the conflict and comedy here rely on the battle of wills between a man with no self-control and the epitome of the straight-laced academic. Where Set Fire falters, though, is in Brinnin’s very characterization. He is the focal point of the film, a human litmus test of the toll Thomas’s lifestyle takes on a person. But he is reserved to a fault, making emotional revelations almost impossible. Brinnin may have the misfortune to see an idol for what he is, but even Wood’s doe eyes fail to make this realization anything more emotionally racking than the reinforcement of what he already knew.
And the same can be said of the film as a whole. Although Dylan Thomas did die of symptoms related to his uninhibited lifestyle while on a speaking tour of America, Set Fire does not extend its narrative that far. Instead, Set Fire is solely concerned with the beginning, and, honestly, there is only so much content to take away from that first American trip (predominantly, that Dylan Thomas was as bad a drunk as rumored, if not more so). This we already know, and, despite their best efforts, Jones and Wood don’t forge a moving bond on screen to infuse their relationship with much drama. Their best interplay comes in a wholly incongruous scene exchanging ghost stories in a cabin with none other than Shirley Jackson (Shirley Henderson) and her husband (Kevin Eldon). For once, Brinnin voices his disgust for Thomas, who cannot resist alcohol for a single day and is single-handedly sabotaging his speaking tour. His emotions are powerful, but the venom in Brinnin’s speech is unbelievable.
Set Fire is certainly not without skill, and “Downton Abbey” alum Goddard clearly has a flair for the dramatic at the least in the film’s staging. From a reference to Marat in the bathtub to the Yale reading where poetry scholars sit as literal jurors – the judges of Thomas’s fate in American academia – evocative set pieces attempt to patch the holes made elsewhere in the script. But the overall tonal disconnect is unforgiving. Thomas is – from scene to scene – the comedian, the wounded artiste, the child who hasn’t grown up and the genius. All this leads up to a finale all-cast rendition of Thomas’s poem “Love In The Asylum,” which simultaneously breaks the fourth wall and fulfills the clichéd requirement for poetry biopics: the reading of a poem to make it corroborate the specific events the film chose to depict, forcing said poem to not only be autobiographical but also to resonate with the semi-biographical situation on the screen.