How can we ensure that the forthcoming bio-pic on Dylan Thomas does not turn the film-makers’ imaginations, feelings and emotion into accepted “fact” about the life of the poet.
Perhaps, indeed, we should look to a touch of help from the minister himself, the Rev Rhodri Glyn Thomas.
Like so much which appears from the world of film and the art, The Edge of Love seems strong on emotion and feelings, but weak on accuracy and the facts.
We should of course be glad that for once fair emphasis is given to his couple of years in New Quay – which some of us already now know as the critical template for almost all that appears in Under Milk Wood.
Not that the great “British” art world would know that; it’s a miracle that Londoners have reached as far as Wales, even more that they have penetrated to Laugharne.
But you really cannot expect many beyond Cardis to know about Dylan Thomas, Capt Killick, and the rapid fire from his machine-gun aimed in Dylan’s direction at his home at Mashoda in New Quay (non-Nonconformist drinkers would know the facts best as a full newspaper report, from the Welsh Gazette, of the murder hearing has hung for years in a bar in the town).
To be fair to a Murdoch paper, the Sunday Times got to know enough to reject some of the crucial facts on which the film is based – Dylan’s “love affair” with Vera Killick, her “lesbian” relationship with Caitlin, the relationship between Dylan and war-hero Killick, etc.
The film plays on sexual jealousy being behind the sten-gun incident. But then sex puts bums on cinema seats, and apparently nudity is offered in support.
But David N Thomas, who has researched the incident well in his Seren volume, reckons a human failing other than sex lies behind the incident.
Some of Killick’s pay had been used to keep the Thomases in New Quay, and the returned wartime soldier thought it a bit much when Dylan’s arty-farty crowd deliberately (more likely, accidentally) ignored him in a New Quay pub: “They thought they didn’t want to see the goose that had been laying the golden egg; I’ll put the wind up these buggers,” he said later.
I am sure the Rev Min accepts that it isn’t just sex that makes the world go around; let’s hope he keeps a witty line in reserve to point the finger at that other great sin – jealousy.
