The Edge of Love (2008)
Director: John Maybury
Entertainment grade: C
History grade: C+
Dylan Thomas's poetry was first published in the 1930s, when he was still a teenager. His deep, sonorous voice and beautiful language made him a celebrity on the wireless; his most famous work – Under Milk Wood – was written for radio.
Romance
The Edge of Love focuses on the relationships between Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), his wife Caitlin MacNamara (Sienna Miller), Thomas's childhood friend Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley) and her soldier husband William Killick (Cillian Murphy). The film claims these two couples were entwined in a messy love quadrilateral.
In real life, Thomas served as best man to the Killicks, and Vera was close to Caitlin, but there is scant evidence for any affairs. There are hardly any mentions of either Vera or William in Thomas's collected letters, though he does occasionally call William "Captain Waistcoat" (owing to his dandyish dress sense), and at one point unkindly compares Phillips with "a pudding-faced blond sloth".
People
With William away fighting in Greece, the Thomases and Vera move to a cliff-top in Cardiganshire to wait out the war. After much persuasion, Dylan finally seduces Vera.
The movie has made the presumably commercial decision to turn Vera – in real life an eccentric bohemian sculptor trained by Henry Moore – into a glamour-puss nightclub singer who seems to have no wits about her at all. The real Thomas's description of Vera at the time implies a far more interesting character than the one in the movie: "Vera lives on cocoa, and reads books about the technique of third-century brass work, and gets up only once a day to boil the cat an egg, which it detests." No reluctant cats were fed boiled eggs during the making of this motion picture. Unfortunately.
Crime
William returns from Greece shell-shocked. One night in the pub, he gets into a brawl with Dylan's fancy London friends. The film has politely omitted the claim made by Caitlin and others that William started the fight by making antisemitic remarks. Later that night, William approaches the Thomases' bungalow with his Sten gun and a grenade. He fires shots into the living room, just missing the Thomases, their baby and their friends, then bursts in and waves his weapons around until he can be calmed down.
In real life, it did indeed happen more or less like this. "Drunken Waistcoat was also nursing a grudge," wrote Caitlin. "He was convinced that his wife had been living with us in a ménage à trois (which was a ridiculous thought) while he had been away, and that we had been drinking too much of his money (there may have been some truth in that)."
Justice
During the trial, Vera privately begs Dylan not to testify against William. "I can't live without him," she says. "I'm begging you to help him." Instead, Thomas condemns him on the stand.
This is not even slightly true. What's particularly odd, though, is that the film wants its audience to sympathise not with Thomas, whose house has been machine- gunned by a maniac while he, his family and his friends were inside, but with the maniac. It's too much to ask. Anyone can sympathise with a soldier traumatised by war, but opening fire on your neighbours is not a reasonable way to deal with the trauma. As the judge in the film says, "in my opinion, it is not an innocent hand that wields a gun against a civilian household".
In real life, the judge advised the jury to acquit William. In the movie, the jury acquits him in defiance of the judge. The film invites us to feel relieved at this verdict, which in fact leaves us feeling alarmed.
Perhaps The Edge of Love's extraordinary sympathy for William and Vera Killick has something to do with the fact that its producer, Rebekah Gilbertson, is their granddaughter.
Verdict
The Edge of Love is too soft on William Killick, too hard on Dylan Thomas, and fluffs poor old Vera Phillips and her third-century brasswork altogether.