Sylvia
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Movie Reviews of Sylvia
Movie Review: The Hughes-Plath Marriage, In Shorthand
Summary: 3 Stars
In her effort to avoid blaming the much-maligned Ted Hughes for Sylvia Plath's 1963 suicide, the director of "Sylvia" reduces the period covering Plath's graduate studies at Cambridge University, her marriage to Hughes, the birth of their two children, and Plath's descent into morbid depression and suicide, to a series of rapid brushstrokes. These brushstrokes, unfortunately, are too shallow to convey the complexity of Plath's relationship with Hughes, let alone her relationship with the emotional demons that had haunted Plath since puberty. The problem is, this shallowness not only doesn't tell the whole truth, it alters it.
Absent from the film is Sylvia's tortured psychological relationship with the father she lost at the age of eight; her equally complex relationship with her emotionally repressed mother is barely referenced (the scene in which the beautiful Blythe Danner, as Sylvia' mother, tells Hughes that Sylvia loves him because he's the only man she's ever been afraid of, as all other men have been afraid of her, is totally out of character given even a passing knowledge of Aurelia Plath); Sylvia's unrealistic yearnings toward men and marriage as expressed through her dogged search for the perfect Uber-Mate who was part Great Hunter/part Great Poet; Hughes's complex relationship with his sister, Olwyn, with whom Plath felt intensely competitive; Hughes's propensity to occasional violence; and, lastly, Hughes's willingness to allow Plath's more overt ambition to serve his work as well, while he posed as the purer spirit who didn't care whether his work was published or not. It is a great irony that Hughes went on to become Poet Laureate of England, because Plath devoted herself as much to circulating his work as hers in the early years of their marriage, in a way that he either was not willing or organized enough to do. It is doubtful that Hughes would have gotten as well known as he did, as early as he did, without her efforts. Sylvia, in her unabashed ambition, was as quintessentially American as Hughes was quintessentially English in his public demurral of ambition. Because of her ambition, her obvious desire to marry Hughes, and the intense emotional persona that many had observed, Hughes's friends were stunned at his choice. This reviewer has always suspected that Hughes found Plath so attractive because her ambition served as a shield behind which he could hide his own.
The bottom line is that neither of these two intense, gifted, and unusual people was a bed of roses to live with. Yet we see in the film only that Sylvia is riddled with suspicion about her husband's fidelity, that she suffered from some writer's block at one point that caused her to be jealous of his steady output, and that suddenly her fears re his infidelity materialized. The film doesn't make clear which came first: her increasingly bizarre behavior, or his increasing loss of interest in the marriage and in sustaining an emotionally unstable partner. In an extraordinarily bitchy memoir, Dido Merwin, who got to know the couple when they moved permanently to England, places the blame for Hughes's defection from the marriage with Asia Wevill squarely on Plath's suspicions, which Merwin clearly felt drove Hughes to shrug his shoulders and act on those suspicions - a monstrously oversimplified view that absolves Hughes of any responsibility for how he handled the mounting tensions in his marriage.
In addition to searching for the Uber-Mate, Plath was obsessed with being one. By all accounts she was an attentive mother and an accomplished cook and housewife. When she wasn't parenting, laundering, cleaning, and cooking, Plath found time to write some more than respectable poetry, her one novel ("The Bell Jar", published first under the pen name Victoria Lucas), and keep her own work and that of her husband's (she retyped all his manuscripts) in constant circulation. And, while Hughes's adoration of their first child, Frieda, is included in the film, his peculiar resentment and emotional distance from their second child, Nick, is not.
By the time the Hughes's moved to the countryside in Devon, Plath had gone from a striking and vibrant, if troubled blonde, to a dowdy, harried mother with long brown braids, trying to keep bees, grow flowers and vegetables, run a large house with few modern conveniences, care for two small children, and, in the few hours before dawn she could call her own, write. The house was nearly impossible to heat - in winter the indoor temperature settled in the mid-40 degrees and Plath was constantly sick.
The film does not illustrate Plath's lifelong penchant for unrealistic idealizations - she plunges eagerly into the idea of English country life without weighing the intellectual consequences of isolation from the cultural stimulation of London and its literary life, or the cost to her writing in time spent running the large, old country house, its kitchen gardens, etc. - much as Plath did not stop to think about the consequences of marrying a stunningly charismatic (ask any woman who heard Hughes read in his prime), gifted, equally complex, husband with a surprisingly old-fashioned view of marriage. The realities of the move to Devon, in my opinion, dealt a crushing blow to the Hughes marriage, from which it never recovered.
Gwyneth Paltrow, bland and fashionably anorexic looking as ever, is woefully miscast as the statuesque, fiery, and deeply disturbed Sylvia. She just doesn't have the candlepower to be plausible as the woman who wrote "Ariel". Daniel Craig, a better and more charismatic actor than Paltrow, does well as far as he's allowed to as Ted Hughes, it's just that he isn't allowed to go too far. But Craig is also somewhat miscast - with all due respect, despite the dyed dark hair, Craig is fair and on the short side. Most of the time I am not wedded to exact verisimilitude in these matters. But those who have read widely about her know that the 5'9" Plath was nearly obsessed with finding a tall, rugged man as her mate, and that the very tall, dark Hughes seemed tailor-made to her eyes ("And then I saw him, that big, dark, hunky boy, the only one there huge enough for me" as she excitedly described him in her journal after seeing Hughes for the first time at that fatal party in Cambridge). To ignore these portions of Plath's psyche is to eliminate crucial pieces of the puzzle of why she chose who she did, and why things turned out the way they did. Craig is intense and intelligent, and not exactly lacking in erotic appeal, but, nevertheless, he was the wrong actor for this part. The more you know about these two writers, the less these two actors fit the bill.
There are, finally, simply too many unaccounted-for gaps in "Sylvia" between what happened and why. In order to fill in those gaps, Jeffs would have had to make a different, more complex film, one in which Plath and Hughes are each shown as much less sympathetic, but far more dimensional. All we have here is a rushed cartoon that adds up to the "Cliff Notes On The Last Years Of Sylvia Plath."
Movie Review: Excellent Performances But "Sylvia" Lacks Depth.
Summary: 3 Stars
Director Christine Jeffs manages to strike an evenhanded tone in her biopic "Sylvia," which deals with the last few years in the life of poet Sylvia Plath. Jeffs doesn't place all the blame for Ms. Plath's suffering, deep depression and subsequent suicide on Ted Hughes, (which many Plath fans do), nor does she glorify the poet's pain. However, the complexities of Plath's psyche, illness, motivations and goals, the intricacies of her relationship and marriage to Hughes, and her roles as mother and poet, are short shrifted. I don't know if this flaw is due to the limitations of the medium or to problems with the screenwriting and direction. This is a film about a woman with a suicidal past who writes poetry, loves, marries, becomes depressed, insecure and jealous, has children, is "deceived," falls deeper into depression and turns on the gas - the main character just happens to be Sylvia Plath. I really would have liked to have seen more of an emphasis given to Plath's writing and love of literature. Ms. Plath also placed tremendous importance on parenting her children and often found much pleasure in being a mother and a wife, as well as a poet. This is not evident in the movie.Sylvia Plath's story is a desperate and tragic one. However, the movie dwells on her depression to the extent that it appears the writer never had a happy moment after her honeymoon. Even the film's use of color reflects this unhappy mood. Plath dresses in warm colors up until her wedding, after which her clothes and the ambient colors become darker and darker. Her writer's block is clearly shown but her periods of extreme productivity, especially toward the end of her life, when, writing through the nights she poured poetry onto the page with almost manic energy, are not really portrayed. All the biographies I have read on Sylvia Plath discuss the joy she found in motherhood. Her exhaustion caring for two small children, taking care of her home and writing is evident throughout the movie, as it was in real life. But nowhere is Ms. Plath shown laughing and playing with her children, with the exception of a brief Christmas scene. Her small daughter is almost always shown toddling behind her mother, a bewildered, sad expression on her face. Nor does the movie show Ms. Plath's tremendous struggle to live, fighting against her overwhelming depression. The contrasts between happiness and deep sorrow, energy and listlessness, struggle for control over her demons and loss of control are strangely absent. The character of Sylvia Plath ultimately comes across as a relatively passive figure, at the mercy of her mental illness, whose moods are closely tied to her husband's demonstrations of affection and attention.
Gwyneth Paltrow does a wonderful job, as always, given the material she had to work with. Her performance is sensitive and intense. The few times she recites poetry, including a wonderful scene where she does a small bit from Chaucer's "Wife of Bath" in Middle English, are extraordinary. Daniel Craig as Ted Hughes is excellent, capturing the magnetic charisma of the poet, his bewilderment as his relationship falls apart, and his careless indifference toward Sylvia's suffering and his children's vulnerability. Blythe Danner, Paltrow's mother in real life, is excellent in the role of Plath's mother and Michael Gambon does an extraordinary job as the sympathetic downstairs neighbor.
I have been a big fan of Sylvia Plath's poetry for many years and have read some excellent biographies on the poet as well as work by Ted Hughes. This is a difficult review for me to write because I want to be objective about the film, which does oversimplify Ms. Plath's life. We get the facts but not the depth. There is a tremendous lack of scope here. If one is not familiar with Plath and her work I am not sure that the movie would inform with more than a melodramatic overview of her life. As stated above, the acting is fine and the photography appropriately moody. For a more comprehensive experience I would suggest reading some of Ms. Plath's exceptional poetry, if you haven't already, before viewing the film.
JANA
Movie Review: Ok bio but misses some of the spirit of its subject
Summary: 3 Stars
***1/2 What is it about an artist dying young - particularly if it is at his or her own hands - that strikes such a deep chord in so many of us? Is it the fact that this rare and special person achieves a kind of mastery of fate at the last moment, a perfect conclusion to this messy business of life that we mere mortals can never hope to attain? Could it be that this early death is just one more instance of an artist taking the elements of raw reality and transforming them into something stylized, transcendent and meaningful for the rest of us to brood over and contemplate? When poet and novelist Sylvia Plath committed suicide in 1963, she became the archetype of the tortured artist - particularly for sensitive young people who came to romanticize her end and her suffering in ways that lifted her and her work to iconic status. The biopic, entitled simply "Sylvia," gets the "tortured" part pretty much right, but has considerably less success with the "artist."
The film focuses mainly on the tumultuous relationship between Plath and her husband of eight years, famed poet Ted Hughes. The story begins in 1956 with their love-at-first-sight meeting when they were both students at Cambridge University. The film moves quickly through the years, showing how, after a short period of relative marital bliss, Ted's philandering began to take its toll on the relationship. As portrayed in the movie, Sylvia, despite her notable talent, is a mass of neuroses and insecurities, always toiling in the shadows of her (initially at least) much more well known and commercially successful husband. But her feelings of inadequacy and jealousy over Ted's infidelities cannot, in and of themselves, entirely account for her paranoia, her outbursts of anger and her suicidal tendencies. Those resulted mainly from the clinical depression that tormented the woman from the time of her father's death early in her childhood to her own tragic end. The movie sidesteps the electroshock therapy Plath underwent at various times in her life (though it very subtly hints at them), yet the film still manages to convey just how great a victim she was of this disease she could not overcome.
Thanks to John Brownlow`s rather singlemindedly depressing screenplay, there's a tremendous feeling of sadness hovering over the film. Director Christine Jeffs brings a raw intensity to many of the confrontation scenes involving the pain-wracked, benighted couple. As Sylvia and Ted, Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig give rich, moving and sensitive performances, and Michael Gambon leaves his mark as a sympathetic neighbor who tries but does not succeed at saving Sylvia.
If there is a flaw in "Sylvia," it is one common to films that attempt to portray the lives of artists, particularly writers. Although a scenarist can dramatize the details of an artist`s life, it is virtually impossible for him to capture the richness and power of the art itself in the different medium of film. We never get the sense of how Sylvia either overcomes the difficulties of her life to succeed in her writing or how she uses those difficulties to enhance her art. What we do get is a few shots of Sylvia sitting in front of a typewriter, a comment or two about a book that has been or is soon to be published, a few references to critical reviews, and a smattering of voiceover recitations of Plath's poetry. What we don't get and what it is virtually impossible for film to capture is the essence of the writing itself. For this, one needs to return to the source material, the works that have lived on after the woman herself all these years. If the movie inspires new people to explore Sylvia Plath's writing, it will not have been in vain.
Movie Review: Dull, Dreary, Depressed
Summary: 3 Stars
A film by Christine Jeffs
"Sylvia" is a film about the life of the American poet Sylvia Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow). The film begins with Plath in college and being all upset about the review of her poetry in a magazine (it might have been a university magazine, but that is never made clear). Soon after she is told about another young poet named Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig). They meet and fall in lust, and despite the title of the movie being "Sylvia" the movie quickly becomes about Sylvia and Ted. Perhaps this is my greatest problem with "Sylvia", that we don't see Sylvia Plath as her own woman. Instead we see Sylvia Plath only in relation to Ted Hughes. I do not know too much about the life of Plath, but since her journals were posthumously published, and she is the author of "The Bell Jar", "Ariel" and won the Pulitzer Prize (also posthumously) for her collected poetry, surely she was a strong enough personality to actually be the subject of a movie which is supposedly about her. But, perhaps I'm wrong about that.
This is a depressing movie. Sylvia Plath was fairly depressive in her own life, and "Sylvia" gets this right. She is manic and unstable and emotionally beat down by Ted Hughes. Her marriage of ups and downs is mostly downs and apparently she is never able to find her focus in writing, though she does manage to publish a couple of books of poetry. She is still overshadowed by her more successful husband. At this point, I think "I" want to stick my head in an oven. It feels like Plath gets yanked around from place to place and is her own emotional rollercoaster and gets no emotional support from her husband who ends up cheating on her anyway.
We never really get to see Sylvia writing her poetry, or speaking her poetry, or using any of her intellectual talents other than in one early scene which sets up the lust between Plath and Hughes. The reason for this is probably because Sylvia Plath's daughter would not permit the filmmakers to use any of her mother's poetry, which meant that only whatever could be legally used outside of that permission was used. This left us with only a couple of brief lines of poetry from a very famous poet. This unquestionably harms the movie because we have no sense in why Plath is famous and remembered. All we have is what we see and hear in the movie and that is a depressed poet who doesn't write is having an unhappy life. Let me see "that" movie!
The problem is not the casting. Gwyneth Paltrow does an excellent job in portraying Sylvia Plath and she even looks remarkably like the pictures I have seen of Sylvia Plath. Daniel Craig does a fine job of Ted Hughes, though I have no sense of comparison. The problem is that this is a very dreary movie and it gives us no reason to care for these characters, especially the heroine. "Sylvia" is dull, it is boring. This was a good role for Gwyneth Paltrow to play, but she would have been better served in a different movie about Sylvia Plath. Grade: C-
-Joe Sherry
Movie Review: Gwyneth good, the rest... not as good as it could have been
Summary: 3 Stars
Making a movie about Sylvia Plath is an incredible opportunity to tell a story about a woman who was quite talented and interesting,yes? So why did the film makers not rise to the occasion? Instead they decided to make a movie that gives a breif, "sweeping" glimpse into the relationship of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. The title is a little misleading, and should of been something like "Sylvia & Ted" Or "Watch Sylvia push Ted into an affair because of her own mentally unstable inner life" I was disapointed afterall because the movie is called "Sylvia" and having Gwyneth Paltrow deliver such a powerful ,beautiful and brutal performance should of been enough to inspire these people to jump at the chance they had in front of them..to make this film a great big story of her life. Which is what most of her fans, (and from reading most of the reviews out here) people were expecting. But it wasn't and so all I can say is that if you are interested in watching or buying this movie do not go in with too much expectation. Instead your going to get a story about a mentally ill woman who loves poetry, who falls in love, who creates havoc on her marriage, and who finally takes her own life. It is artistically done and beautifully shot and sometimes takes your breath away, but is about all good I can say.
Now, the actor who plays Ted Hughes (im too lazy to find his name) is pretty interesting in that he DOES play Ted well, but for some reason there is not a whole lot of chemistry between Gwyneth and this man. I think, if your going to focus a film around 2 people in a relationshp then the audience has to be invested in both the people equally, but this film has a tendency to look over Ted as the person he was truly, and instead focuses on what he meant as a piece of Sylvia's life.
Because we don't really see the romance bloom, (as if the film makers expected the viewer to understand and know the backstory of Ted and Sylvia) we dont feel as much passion and love for the two of them together as we should-- which is quite a mis-step considering this film is centered around this relationship. Well...having all this said, it is a good movie to watch on a sunday afternoon when you are feeling a bit blue and looking to be elevated onto a different sense of life; because it is artistic and poetically shot and is a tragic tale to get lost in. It is not a waste of time or money; it is just not as great as it could of been.