The film follows the effort of literary professor John Brinnin when bringing Welsh poet Dylan Thomas to perform in New York. After a week helping Dylan to stay away from alcohol, John realizes how much he wants to protect his friend instead of his career as first thought. Dylan also teaches John the lesson about poetry: the feeling is more important than technique.
Set Fire belongs to a genre that might be called Close Encounters With Greatness. They're not biopics, but glancing views by nobodies in a position to observe the backstage workings of genius. It's a formula, and Set Fire never gets beyond that formula.
The film wallows too much in its subject's glumness, but it comes alive whenever TV actor and co-writer Celyn Jones, whose only previous film credit is 2005's Lassie, plays Thomas as a big shaggy dog.
"Set Fire to the Stars" barely skims the surface of characters you wish had been given more dimension, but as a snapshot of postwar academia and its pretensions, it exerts a creepy fascination.
