Under Milk Wood (15.)
Directed by Kevin Allen.
Starring Rhys Ifans, Charlotte Church, Aneurin Hughes, Karen Elli, Bradley Freegard and Steffan Rhodri. 87 mins
It may be considered cruel and unfair to mention it but, boy, they don't make 'em like Richard Burton any more. Few educations, no matter how comprehensive, passed without the day when the English Lit teacher wheeled out the school record player to spin the album recoding of the Burton led recording of Under Milk Wood at 33 r.p.m.s. and it is not something that is every going to leave you.
In this new version his role as First Voice is passed to Rhys Ifans, a sometimes mesmerising actor but a surprisingly flat orator. Granted, it is a very big voice to fill - Burton is so intrinsically associated with Thomas's work that they may be considered co creators - but even so, it's a flat effort that puts precious little gusto and snap put into the jokey alliteration and word play.
This new version chooses to interpret the play as a bawdy, skittish debunking of Molly Bloom's soliloquy, which is a valid tack to take but I don't remember Under Milk Wood being quite so relentlessly sex obsessed. The erotic undercurrent is make explicit and the seaside town Llareggub becomes a Cambrian Magerluf with hordes of hen parties and stag does cackling wildly at each and every phallic image that is inserted into the screen. The adaptation is credited to director Kevin (brother of Keith) Allen, Michael Breen and one time million pound poet Murray Lachlan Young and their approach seems to have been to go through the text, find every double entendre and then visualise it.
Why do so many filmmakers believe that great prose requires visual interpretation? It doesn't, it really doesn't. The moment in a film adaptation when a particularly memorable section of prose is narrated is always a cheat, always fraudulent. (Though I may make exception for some of Johnny Depp's readings of the Hunter S lines in Fear and Loathing.) The film fails like Joseph Strick's attempts to film Ulysses but while that was highbrow and lifeless this film decides that the visual equivalnet of Thomas's prose is a sucession of garish and grotesque close ups, bawdy knees ups shot and various old fashioned visual effects. It's an antiquated notion of arty, like an incredibly loquacious episode of Ballymory, populated by the cast of On The Buses and shot in the style of Vision On. The worst thing about it is that all the visuals do are distract from the language, and the language is the whole point.
Directed by Kevin Allen.
Starring Rhys Ifans, Charlotte Church, Aneurin Hughes, Karen Elli, Bradley Freegard and Steffan Rhodri. 87 mins
It may be considered cruel and unfair to mention it but, boy, they don't make 'em like Richard Burton any more. Few educations, no matter how comprehensive, passed without the day when the English Lit teacher wheeled out the school record player to spin the album recoding of the Burton led recording of Under Milk Wood at 33 r.p.m.s. and it is not something that is every going to leave you.
In this new version his role as First Voice is passed to Rhys Ifans, a sometimes mesmerising actor but a surprisingly flat orator. Granted, it is a very big voice to fill - Burton is so intrinsically associated with Thomas's work that they may be considered co creators - but even so, it's a flat effort that puts precious little gusto and snap put into the jokey alliteration and word play.
This new version chooses to interpret the play as a bawdy, skittish debunking of Molly Bloom's soliloquy, which is a valid tack to take but I don't remember Under Milk Wood being quite so relentlessly sex obsessed. The erotic undercurrent is make explicit and the seaside town Llareggub becomes a Cambrian Magerluf with hordes of hen parties and stag does cackling wildly at each and every phallic image that is inserted into the screen. The adaptation is credited to director Kevin (brother of Keith) Allen, Michael Breen and one time million pound poet Murray Lachlan Young and their approach seems to have been to go through the text, find every double entendre and then visualise it.
Why do so many filmmakers believe that great prose requires visual interpretation? It doesn't, it really doesn't. The moment in a film adaptation when a particularly memorable section of prose is narrated is always a cheat, always fraudulent. (Though I may make exception for some of Johnny Depp's readings of the Hunter S lines in Fear and Loathing.) The film fails like Joseph Strick's attempts to film Ulysses but while that was highbrow and lifeless this film decides that the visual equivalnet of Thomas's prose is a sucession of garish and grotesque close ups, bawdy knees ups shot and various old fashioned visual effects. It's an antiquated notion of arty, like an incredibly loquacious episode of Ballymory, populated by the cast of On The Buses and shot in the style of Vision On. The worst thing about it is that all the visuals do are distract from the language, and the language is the whole point.
