UNDER MILK WOOD

The movie is essentially a montage of dreams, and therefore has a hallucinatory and nightmarish quality.

I hate it when you know that a bunch of prominent people got together to make a film, but you can't watch it because it's out of print. I'm of the opinion that anything with potential relevance to film history should be rereleased often enough to make it available to the general public. Even if something hasn't exactly stood the test of time, it's always nice to get your hands on it and judge for yourself. I commend the Sundance Channel and the Sundance Institute for releasing films like Under Milk Wood, and for making the effort to include as many interesting extra features as possible. That said, Under Milk Wood is really an awful movie.

Based on a Dylan Thomas play, and starring Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Elizabeth Taylor, and Glynis Johns, Under Milk Wood looks promising enough. It sounds like a quaint and humorous little movie about the inhabitants of a small village in Wales, and with the word classic splashed all over the cover, you're expecting it to be entertaining in some traditional in some sense of the word. What you get is quite different.

Like a horror movie, Under Milk Wood begins with an ominous shot of the night sky, then launches into the secrets and dreams of the villagers—sort of an exploration of their inner lives. I can see what they were trying to do with this movie, but the execution leaves a great deal to be desired. Peter O'Toole's character is an old blind man who spends his days dreaming of his youth and his lover (played Elizabeth Taylor in copious amounts of blue eye shadow). When I first saw him laying on his bed I thought it was just some sort of dummy made up to look like him—like something out of Jim Henson's Creature Shop. He has these disturbing milky blue contacts to make his eyes look blind, and his skin—for some reason—looks strangely like terry cloth.

As if that weren't enough, the movie is essentially a montage of dreams, and therefore has a hallucinatory and nightmarish quality. The lovely Richard Burton handles most of the narration, but he tends to get carried away when reading poetry. His voice becomes impassioned, and he clips along at such a pace that it becomes somewhat aggressive and scary. I could listen to him read The Little Prince all day, but he's like an animal when he reads poetry. I start to feel like he's going to leap out of the stereo and get me. The combination of images and narration in this film evokes a fight or flight reaction, but in no way makes you want to snuggle up and enjoy the show.

That aside, Under Milk Wood is certainly an interesting example of independent film-making gone awry. It was clearly made by intelligent people who cared about the subject matter, and the extra features are quite educational. There's an excellent but brief interview with Richard Burton (in color!), and he talks about the virtues of Dylan Thomas as a writer. He believed that Thomas would have wanted his play translated to film, and was doing his best on the poet's behalf. If nothing else, one has to appreciate Burton's genuine respect for literature.

The director also provides commentary and explains his vision through interviews, giving us insight into the film-making process. Other features include a substantial documentary on Dylan Thomas himself, a photo gallery, production notes, and original and rerelease trailers. As a whole, the DVD has great potential as an educational tool, whether you're studying Dylan Thomas, film, or Wales. Sadly, it's just not much fun as entertainment.