If Aeronwy Thomas is disappointed she is not portrayed in The Edge of Love,
John Maybury’s moving and visually stunning film centred on the second world
war antics of her father, the rambunctious Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, she does
not show it. As a two-year-old, she was present in New Quay, west Wales,
when the incident that gives the film its dramatic focus took place.
There, on the night of March 6, 1945, a family friend, Captain William
Killick, repeatedly fired his machinegun into Majoda, the flimsy,
asbestos-ridden bungalow overlooking Cardigan Bay where Aeronwy and her
parents were living. She was asleep in a back room, directly in the line of
fire, while Dylan and his blowsy wife, Caitlin, were carousing with guests
at the front. It was a miracle nobody was killed.
Killick was consumed with a volatile mixture of alcohol, sexual jealousy and
posttraumatic stress disorder after returning from a bloody tour of military
duty in Greece. He found his Welsh-born wife, Vera, living next door to the
Thomases. They had fled the dangers and adrenaline rush of London in the
blitz for the peace of Wales, where their bohemian life-style had continued,
while he was risking his skin.
On one level, he was unable to readjust to reality - a universal complaint of
the returning warrior. Maybury does not spell out the parallels with Iraq,
but they are always there. More specifically, Vera had been supporting the
indigent Thomases from her husband’s hard-won army pay. To top it all,
Killick suspected that she had been having an affair with Dylan – who, to
give the story added drama (and justify its title), had supposedly been her
first lover when they were teen-agers in Swansea.
Deviation from truth is a potential problem in any biopic. As the biographer
of Dylan Thomas, I am not aware of any affair between him and Vera. As a
boy, he had simply been friendly with her family, the Phillipses, who lived
in one of the larger, more welcoming houses near his own in the Uplands area
of Swansea.
Rebekah Gilbertson, 34, who conceived and produced the film, admits there is
no evidence for an affair, but says: “We wanted to find the dramatic truth
about the characters. The actual truth was scarce.” She has a personal
investment: William and Vera Killick were her grandparents. She was,
therefore, keen to hear Aeronwy Thomas’s reaction after a screening of the
film in Soho last week, and was visibly relieved when this proved positive.
It might have been different. When I took Thomas round the corner for lunch at
the French pub, one of her father’s regular drinking haunts, she told me,
with the quiet humour that has made her an excellent ambassador for the
Dylan Thomas estate: “I should be very angry with that man Killick, because
he tried to kill me.” She bears no grudges, however, adding that this was
only one of several times she nearly lost her life as a result of her
parents’ rickety routine. Aeronwy is a poet who has recently returned from a
tour of America, where she read from both her own and her father’s work, but
has turned her back on her parents’ unpredictable, often emotionally
damaging existence. Married with two children, she lives in New Malden,
southwest London, where she worships at the local church.
With its obeisance to The Map of Love, a 1939 collection of Dylan Thomas
poems, this film is about a foursome. For the purposes of the drama, Vera
Phillips (played by Keira Knightley) is a sultry singer in wartime London.
While being courted by Killick, she meets her supposed old flame, Dylan,
who, when not getting drunk, makes propaganda films for the government. Vera
develops a close friendship with the promiscuous Caitlin (Sienna Miller),
which makes for problems when, after reluctantly marrying Killick prior to
his call-up, she cannot get over her love for Dylan. Amid much frolicking,
their fragile relationships are shattered by Killick’s return, the “Majoda
incident” and his subsequent trial for attempted murder.
Aeronwy Thomas is amused by the film’s overt prettiness. “The dresses all look
too expensive,” she says, recalling her childhood. “Where are the patches on
the elbows of coats and cardigans?” She is happy, however, to recognise the
aesthetic demands of commercial cinema and to agree that, while sometimes
economical with the actualité, this exuberant film captures the
spirit of her parents’ lives. She feels it is successful in evoking her
mother, with her Irish penchant for truth, above all, and is not put out
that the film shows her older brother, Llewelyn, rather than her, at Majoda.
He was staying that night with her grandmother in Hampshire. When she raised
this point with the makers, she was told this was a drama rather than a
documentary. Gilbertson adds that it was necessary to keep the number of
characters small and readily identifiable.
Thomas’s only beef is the portrayal of her father as a vindictive man intent
on sending Killick to jail. In particular, Dylan gives evidence at the trial
that the captain was sober, and therefore more culpable, at the time of the
shooting. Aeronwy says (and evidence supports her) that Dylan in fact tried
to help Killick. With a hint of weary experience, she adds: “People who
drink have a code that anything that happens under the influence of alcohol
is forgotten the next day. You can’t require people to be charitable to you
if don’t reciprocate.” In the context of the film, this lapse is
understandable. Dylan’s anger expresses the break-up of his happy,
irresponsible three-way ménage, as Killick’s return forces Vera to choose
reality over romance.
For Gilbertson, the movie’s release is the culmination of a process that
started seven years ago, shortly after she won a place to study film
production at the National Film and Television School. Even before starting
her MA course, she was thinking about how to approach a module that required
her to develop her own story. In October 2001, her beloved grandfather
William died. Another family member suggested that she might look at his
involvement in the “Majoda incident” for her project.
Gilbertson was intrigued. She was aware of this family history, but it was not
discussed. This was due in part to Killick’s embarrassment at his moment of
madness (he tried to stop the publication of a letter in which Dylan
described the events), and partly to reaction against the poet in
Nonconformist Wales, where he was regarded as a wastrel.
With the 50th anniversary of Dylan’s death looming in 2003, however, he was
rediscovered and attitudes began to change. The actor Neil Morrissey bought
up hostelries around the poet’s later home in Laugharne, Carmarthen-shire
(including Brown’s, the pub where Dylan took his daily tipple or ten), and,
fresh from success with Enigma, Mick Jagger’s company, Jagged Films, had a
script for a biopic ready to run. Even Welsh tourist boards belatedly woke
up to the potential of a home-grown cultural hero.
At the same time, Gilbertson’s career took off. On a parallel track, she won a
fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts
to make a short film about sustainable development. Her script consultant
was the playwright Sharman Macdonald, best known for When I Was a Girl I
Used to Scream and Shout; and playing a small part was Macdonald’s teenage
daughter, Keira Knightley, who was just about to find acclaim in Bend It
Like Beckham.
As a novice producer, Gilbertson needed someone experienced beside her. At
film school, she had been taught by Sarah Rad-clyffe, who had produced My
Beautiful Laundrette for Working Title, and who agreed to work on this
project.
Where, though, to find a director sympathetic not just to this setup, but to
the world of Dylan Thomas? Gilbertson gravitated to the cinematically
adventurous John Maybury, with whom Knightley had worked on a feature called
The Jacket. He seemed ideal, having enjoyed success with a biopic about
Francis Bacon, another Soho habitué. Maybury, however, was notably elusive,
even for the pulchritudinous star of The Jacket. So Knightley, who had
committed herself wholeheartedly to the project, took to attracting him with
poems. (Now those would be collector’s items.) Eventually, he agreed to read
the script, though it is not clear if her verse or gifts of champagne did
the trick.
Knightley’s involvement helped Gilbertson to raise £8.5m, attract other stars
(Lindsay Lohan was once mooted to play Caitlin) and talk up the film with
suggestions of a lesbian affair between Caitlin and Vera; these are not
followed up, though plenty of bedroom romps remain.
Aeronwy Thomas takes this all in her stride. “There’s a nebulous area between
fact and fiction, which can be dealt with rather badly,” she observes. “This
film deals with it well.” She adds: “It’s a sort of utopia, really, with
Dylan sitting in as an icon.”
Andrew Lycett’s Dylan Thomas is published by Phoenix (£8.99); The Edge of Love
opens on June 20
