Set Fire to the Stars.

Director:	Andy Goddard
Country:	UK
Year:	2014
Running Time:	90mins
Principle Cast:	Elijah Wood	John M Brinnin
	Celyn Jones	Dylan Thomas
	Kelly Reilly	Caitlin Thomas
	Steven Mackintosh	Jack
	Shirley Henderson	Shirley
	Kevin Eldon	Stanley

Apparently only completed 17 days before it was shown at the 2014 EIFF Andy Goddard’s debut feature film Set Fire to the Stars (2014) is the story of Dylan Thomas’s first visit to the United States of America.

Dylan Thomas and John M Brinnin in Swansea?

It was the American poet, literary critic and lecturer John Malcolm Brinnin (Elijah Woods) who invited Thomas (Celyn Jones) to New York in 1950 for the first time to embark on a three-month tour of art centres and university’s, which eventually took in about 40 venues. The movie deals with the problems that Brinnin had with Dylan Thomas’s erratic and drunken behaviour and how he befriended and tried to help the Welsh poet battle his demons, taking him to his family’s isolated summerhouse for a weeklong retreat.

Filmed in black and white at Swansea Bay in Wales in just 18 days, it’s hard to believe we are not in 1950’s America, which owes a lot the DOP Chris Seager and the production designer Edward Thomas. It was Celyn Jones (Castles in the Sky 2014) who told a very full house that he had always wanted to tell this story and portray Thomas, he does in fact look uncannily like him, and it was when he met Andy Goddard that the pair co-wrote the screenplay and the idea for the film began to take shape. They both agreed that the only actor that they felt was right for the part of John Brinnin was Woods, who after reading the script agreed to join the project.  From then on it became a true labour of love and it shows in the final product.

Director Andy Goddard with Celyn Jones and Elijah Wood.

A wordy two-handed character piece that highlights what I feel to be a non-sexual love affair between two world-renowned academics. But a film that has what Elijah Wood so eloquently described as ‘movement, energy and life’, and I would add humour ‘only the truth is funny’[3].  Which in turn is due to some great writing, and superb performances from our two lead actors. This low budget film, which is hard to believe when you watch it, has a great soundtrack scored by one of Celyn Jones musical hero’s Gruff Rhys from the Welsh rock band Super Furry Animals – which we were told would be released in one form or another.  Well worth seeing for Jones uncanny performance, which, given the right exposure, could see an acting nomination come the award season?

Filth.

Its not often that a film goes on general release in Scotland before it does in the rest of the UK, at least not before Independence next September, but that’s what happened with Filth (2013) a British crime comedy-drama written and directed by Jon S Baird and based on Irvine Welsh’s third novel of the same name published in 1998. This is Baird’s second feature film after 2008’s Cass the true story of a former football hooligan who became a writer. I suppose that this new film is also about a thug but this time he is a member of the police force!

The nice policeman teaches the wee man some sign language. 

The problems associated with self loathing seems to appear in many of the movies I have watched recently and raises its psychiatric head once more in this every day story of a bigoted, corrupt and substance abusing alcoholic Edinburgh based Scottish Detective, a sort of over the top John Rebus who hates himself to such a degree that he makes nearly every body’s life a misery he comes into contact with.

Obviously part of the investigatiom!

This terrific piece of story telling is the bastard offspring of a three way cinematic shag between Clockwork Orange (1971), Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant (1992) and Trainspotting (1996) and comprises some of the cream of British acting including Joanne Froggatt, Shirley Henderson, Kate Dickie, Eddie Marsan, Jim Broadbent, Martin Compston, Garry Lewis and John Sessions to name but a few. But even in this exhorted company James McAvoy stands out as the bipolar junkie, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson who when asked by his superior why he joined the police force he replied ‘polices oppression’ ‘did you want to stamp it out from the inside?’ ‘No’ replies Robertson ‘I wanted to be part of it’ which really sums up the character.  

Now there's a man who's not always in control?

It’s a movie that will no doubt divide audiences. As Peter Bradshaw remarked in his critique it amounts to Acid Rain on Leith, but thankfully there’s not a sign of a dance routine although we do get a song from David Soul!

Meeks Cutoff

The daily drudge of frontier life.

In the1840’s it was the inherent right of people to travel from the thriving American Eastern Seaboard to the new Western frontier with a promise of a new and good life. This became known as the Oregon Trail it was a 2000 mile journey that could take between four and six months. These pioneers travelled with their families and there goods and chattels, some made it across the barren dry landscape and some perished on the journey.

Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy 2006) has based her western road movie Meeks Cutoff (2010) on the true story of the fur trapper and guide Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), who due to the risk of Indian attacks left the Oregon Trail declaring that he knew a short cut that would avoid the threatened hostilities and get to the destination a lot sooner! Leading three families on an unmarked path across the high plain desert, he soon becomes lost. Fighting hunger and thirst they had to increase their reliance on each other and when a Native American crosses their path the emigrants are torn between their lack of trust in Meek, who has certainly proven himself to be unreliable, and the Cayuse tribesman (Rod Rondeaux) who is perceived to have an interrogate knowledge of the terrain but is seen as a savage and their natural enemy.

The Women become the dominant force.

The film quite vividly demonstrates how the masculine powerbase soon disintegrates when things get really tough and how the “women folk” become the dominant force. Michelle Williams plays Emily Tetherow the most resolute of the travellers who along with the two other female members of the party, played by the Scottish actress Shirley Henderson and Zoe Kazan, become the central individuals in this ever more deteriorating situation. The authenticity of the untamed frontier is greatly enhanced by the splendid cinematography of Chris Blauvelt. As is the story by some genuinely good acting from all our nine leads that indisputably portray the genuine pain and anguish suffered by these early settlers. And what a great ending, one that credits its audience with some intelligence.