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This November is fast becoming the month of the biopic, seeing a current fervour for the chronicling of the lives of creative icons across the arts. Alongside the releases of Mr. Turner and Jimi: All is By My Side, the more meagre offering on the literary front is Set Fire to the Stars, which documents the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s first tour of the U.S. in 1950.

Andy Goddard’s directorial debut stars Elijah Wood as the poet and professor John Brinnin who acts as fawning fan-cum-babysitter to Celyn Jones’ debauched Thomas as the two embark on a series of readings across the American intellectual circuit. The film opens with Brinnin proposing the tour to an academic committee in New York; when asked his plan to deal with the infamously unpredictable Welshman, he says that he’ll “improvise” with a naïve nonchalance that convinces neither him nor us. Brinnin and Jones, physically resembling a Laurel and Hardy-esque duo, proceed to the former’s cabin in Connecticut as he attempts to keep the ailing poet from self-destructive binges.

The film by no means pushes the boundaries of the conventional biopic formula, following much in the vein of My Week With Marilyn’s (2011) condensed time frame structure. The immediate familiarity between the two men is endearing but lacks convincing development, and the pacing of the film’s second half is haphazard, giving little sense of a resolution, or indeed when it’s actually going to end. However there are moments where elements of the film unify: in particular, a brilliant scene of ghost-storytelling with an upstate couple who join them for dinner and drinks (with more of the latter consumed). In this, Shirley Henderson is captivating and together with her husband, played by Kevin Eldon, the two completely upstage the leading pair.

While Wood’s performance rather solidly makes use of his enormous eyes to the effect of perpetual astonishment, there are instances when the glance narrows and his character displays a strength not previously imagined. Jones’ portrayal of Thomas hinges between that of a melancholy clown and a ferocious drunkard with an aptitude for scathing, as much as for lyrical, language. While we see only glimpses of his life outside of the present moment (there’s a brief apparition of a wild-eyed Kelly Riley as Thomas’s wife Caitlin), his depiction certainly gives us more dimensions between charm and vulnerability than Matthew Rhys’ singularly unremarkable one in the last attempt to bring the poet to the screen in The Edge of Love (2008).

The greatest achievements of the film lie outside the realm of words; the cinematography is beautifully shot in digital monochrome, and the fantastic soundtrack supplied by Gruff Rhys is both cleverly scored and deployed. While Set Fire to the Stars doesn’t delve deeply into Thomas’s creative spirit, it succeeds in handling the fragility of human relations with palpable sensitivity — in this way, perhaps a more touching legacy to his poetry than to his personal struggles.