There's an argument for the biopic to pick a moment in the subject's life that is indicative of the personality and/or their work instead of a sweeping, catch-all life story. Set Fire To The Stars opts for the former – Dylan Thomas' first three-month tour of American colleges in 1950 seen through the eyes of poetry professor – but one scene with Thomas' wife (played here by Kelly Reilly) suggests that maybe there was a better film in that fiery, destructive relationship.
Poetry professor John Brinnin (Wood) sits before his college board with a proposal to bring Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (Jones) to America for a tour of his work. The board advise caution: Thomas is a known lothario, a heavy drinker and a 'man-child'; when Thomas, describing himself as "a shit", orders a milkshake and a comic while sat fully-clothed in the bath, it's hard to disagree. With the big Yale reading imminent, and taking on a doctor's warning that "New York is killing him," Brinnin takes a fading Thomas to his family's lakeside house to detox and prepare...
There has been a spate of biopics of late that share similarities with ...Stars - Howl, Kill Your Darlings, On The Road all boasted a flawed literary genius as subject, the late forties/early fifties era, and eye-catching performances. Another parallel is that the dramas fail to ignite like they should.
What works is how the film looks. Goddard's sumptuous black & white beautifully turns Swansea into 1950s New York with a terrific snow sequence the standout. Celyn Jones, who also co-wrote the script, boasts the eye-catching turn. His Thomas is written in an unflattering light: he's unpredictable, prone to wild mood swings, lets his friends down, and is content to press the self-destruct button just to see what happens, uncaring who the blast affects. But he can be the little-boy-lost too and Jones easily shifts between these gears. Wood has the thankless role as the foil but does get a chance to branch out when goaded into telling a horror story during a storm. Mackintosh, as usual, is in solid form as Brinnin's taskmaster, keeping tabs on the errant duo in the run up to the big Yale reading. Perhaps its biggest achievement, however, is its exploration of words and what they take out of those that conjure them.
But it's hard to care at the end of it all. Ignoring the Ceylan/Reilly dynamic, which could have been a stirring and engaging drama, Ceylan and Goddard miss a trick. Like Thomas and Brinnin stuck in that hut, the film has little to do but hang about waiting for something to happen, which usually comes from Thomas picking up a bottle.