Every Christmas, well rather any time of year really, you can find A Child’s Christmas in Wales being played in my family’s house. This 1987 adaptation of Dylan Thomas’ poem never seems to grow old with my family members, say my dad. I implore anybody who might have a soft side for the nostalgic or just enjoys looking back on remembered years to make it a point to see this movie.
But I digress from my true point of topic…
A few weeks ago I happened across a movie, The Edge of Love. Being the hopeless romantic that I am I was instantly hooked. Much to my surprise and pleasure I came to find out that this film was loosely base upon Dylan Thomas. Only knowing a touch of this poet’s personal life I was intrigued by the way his character in the movie was portrayed and found myself immersed in his poetry once again after the movie had ended. Besides the true raw genius that is Thomas’ poetry, the film caught an interesting side of the 1940’s. I found myself enamored by the red lips, circle skirts and thick heels of the time. But it was more than that. Although the fashion of the time was heading towards a masculine inspired direction, the women still embraced a sense of femininity. There is something to be said about lady like qualities. They are mannerisms that I see very lacking in today's society but should still be embraced and esteemed.
Again… this film by no means is anything of brilliance and besides being somewhat melodramatic towards the end, there are some very simple qualities worth taking note of and if nothing else... take pleasure in the complexity of Thomas' poetry.
Love In The Asylum
A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds
Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds
Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.
She has come possessed
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,
Possessed by the skies
She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust
Yet raves at her will
On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.
And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.
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