The Edge Of Love (2008/Image Blu-ray + DVD-Video)
Picture:
B-/C+ Sound: B/B- Extras: C+ Film: C+
John
Maybury has been directing for years, but made his mark more pronounced with
his arthouse hit Love Is The Devil
(1998, about the artist Francis Bacon) and the cult film The Jacket (2005). Three
years later, he has decided to return to portraits of an artist with The Edge Of Love, a drama about the
life of poet Dylan Thomas played here by Matthew Rhys. The period piece also stars Keira Knightley
and Sienna Miller as the two loves of his life, even if one of them is married.
As a
period piece, it works more often than not, but I was expecting a character
study, but instead, we get a melodrama that may not be sappy, but can be as
muddled as it can be uneven. The film
lapses into Backstage Musical territory when Knightley is a nightclub singer or
doing similar entertainment work, while both she and Miller give two of their
best performances to date. Rhys is also
convincing as Thomas, but I wanted to learn more and the script comes across as
having an odd expectation of the audience being familiar with Dylan’s
work. If so, that is a big mistake and
the kind of things certain elitists (the kind who are cinematically illiterate
and/or outright ignorant) will suggest.
Cillian
Murphy also stars as a husband of one of the women. Acting, production design and costumes are
top rate, but at 111 minutes, Maybury had more time to do more and when it was
over, I had only learned so much about any of these characters. They are interesting, but too much at a
distance for anyone’s own good.
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image looks fine when it is well-lit and using
color in clever ways, but otherwise, this all HD shoot looks too noisy and underwhelming,
a larger problem with the anamorphically enhanced DVD. The sound fares a little better as the
Blu-ray’s DTS-HD Master Audio (MA) lossless 5.1 mix is better than the Dolby
Digital 5.1 mix in either format. This
is dialogue-driven, with the music and some war scenes being the sonic
highlight. Extras in both formats
include a feature length audio commentary by Maybury and Rhys, Looking For The Edge Of Love making-of featurette, trailer and outtakes.
- Nicholas Sheffo
