Last Call: a stark look at Dylan Thomas’ death, but not his life

It is not at all unusual for biographers to explore the lives of great artists or for people to read the resultant biographies in an attempt better to understand the factors that contributed to the artists’ achievements. Sometimes the person’s life may somehow explain the work produced; perhaps too it is hoped that the artist’s life will reveal some clue as to how others may emulate their achievement.

Whatever the reason, an artist who has produced work of great beauty and significance is often found to have lived a life far from ideal. Biographies of artists as diverse as Caravaggio and Dickens reveal that they led lives somewhat less than perfect, despite the glorious nature of their work, without shedding much light on how they achieved such artistic perfection.

Even so, biographical works of artists continue to be produced in abundance in several media. A recent film, Last Call, available on Telus download, tries to come to terms with the grim realities of the life of the Welsh writer Dylan Thomas. Thomas, of course, achieved huge popularity as a poet in the fifties and sixties of the last century. Whether he will continue to be as highly thought of in the years ahead is naturally a matter of conjecture, though it is fairly certain that some of his work will long remain both popular and critically esteemed.

Any exploration of Thomas’s life, however, reveals principally that he was a drunkard, a philanderer, and a wastrel. It little helps the public to understand how the writer produced works which speak so eloquently of such themes as the transitory nature of life, the innocent optimism of youth, or the glory and unity of creation.

This is certainly true of Last Call, an account of Thomas’s fatal final drinking binge at the end of one of his public speaking tours of America. While rather fanciful in its approach to the actual event, it does portray the artist starkly and apparently realistically as an egotistical, self-centred, and self-destructive person, albeit one of great talent. 

There is nothing new in this, nor is there anything which helps us better to understand his work. Though the film attempts a serious statement of the emotional factors which may have made up Thomas’ life by giving a thematic title to each of the 18 drinks which are claimed to have resulted in his death, the film helps in no way towards a greater appreciation of his work.

Rhys Ifans attempts valiantly to portray the artist, though he is unable to reproduce the rich sound of the artist’s voice, a sound which made him popular as a broadcaster even before he gained popularity as a poet. For the rest, the film is simply a dreary slog through a depressing and unenlightening, though ambitious, narrative.

There are brief quotations from “Fern Hill,” “Do not go gentle into that good night,” “Under Milk Wood,” “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” and, of course, “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” These and others including “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog” I delight in listening to frequently through the Caedmon recordings made by Thomas in his tragically short life. However, little seems to be able to explain how the author was able to create such works, works of verbal ingenuity, of passion, and of humour. In fact, the film Last Call serves best simply as a reminder that such works exist.

While we may never understand the artist and the creative process which brought them about, the works stand as a testimony to him as an artist – testimony which I personally believe will bring him an immortality as a truly great writer for ages yet to come. In the end, that is really the only important thing we need to know.