Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

blanche-2 "Sylvia" from 2003 is basically the story of poet Sylvia Plath's relationship with her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, rather than the story of Plath's life, therapy, or evolution as a writer.Someone here put it best -- Plath suffered from depression from the time of her father's death when she was 9 years old, but she also had an almost manic energy which enabled her to churn out her work...and the mania in this film is sadly lacking. Instead, an aura of misery hangs over this movie like a black cloud. I have to admit, knowing something of Plath's life, the black cloud would probably be there anyway; it is difficult to show a writer's creative process on film.The layers of the Plath-Hughes relationship can't really be covered adequately. As portrayed by Daniel Craig, Hughes was a handsome and charismatic man, and he and Plath had an amazing sexual chemistry. Here, Plath is a bundle of neuroses and insecurities and is constantly suspicious when she sees him with a woman. It's not clear that in actuality was true. His infidelity did cause them to separate, but whether or not she drove him to it isn't clear. Living with either one of them couldn't have been easy.Gwyneth Paltrow, for all of this, does a marvelous job as Sylvia, as far as the script will let her. There's nothing of her electroconvulsive therapy, or what she went through under psychoanalysis, or her development under her various teachers, such as Anne Sexton. What you do see is her fragility, her emotions, her depressive state, and her passion. All of the performances are good; Michael Gambon does an excellent job as her concerned neighbor.Plath's daughter was against this film and wrote a poem about it: Now they want to make a film For anyone lacking the ability To imagine the body, head in oven, Orphaning children[...] they think I should give them my mother's words To fill the mouth of their monster, Their Sylvia Suicide Doll

cinemaniac2002 It is no easy task to do a film about a writer, given that what occurs inside a writer's head is so intimate – and often misunderstood. Everything is open to interpretation – and each reader can tend to translate an author's words differently. Gwyneth Paltrow's portrayal of the author is compelling; she deftly neither over or under plays Plath. Daniel Craig as Ted Hughes displays a chemistry with Paltrow that is very believable. As a result of their renderings, the story has much more power and significance than it would if the actors were more obvious and dramatic in their portrayals.For all of its gloom and doom, "Sylvia" provides an introspective look into the life and world of a woman struggling to find her own identity – both as an individual and as a woman. Long before the cultural feminist awakening, Plath wrote astounding poetry that detailed the victimization, rebellion and resultant rage of so many women. As such, she essentially paved the way and gave "permission" for women to write in the most honest, raw and soulful way possible. It is important to know this before seeing the movie; otherwise, much of its true meaning may go lost.The story begins with Plath as an American studying at Cambridge. Her writing appears to be less than well received. However, this is to be expected during this particularly male dominated time. She meets the dashing poet, Ted Hughes, at a party she is attending after becoming aware that those responsible for her latest less than favorable review will be there. Ted insists that it was the editor who ripped her piece apart into shreds – but it is clear that Sylvia knows differently. Still, Plath recognized the brilliance of his work and winds up kissing him by the end of the evening, whereupon she bit his cheek, which drew blood. Thus began their passionate love affair. They move in 1956 to her Massachusetts hometown, where they marry and she sets about teaching at Smith. Four years later, upon struggling to write there, Ted insists that they go back to England. In a lonely country cottage, Sylvia develops the same writer's block problem, favoring baking over writing. Ted notices this, encouraging her to "find a subject" and write. Could be her life was too idyllic to find a subject; Ted would provide plenty of material in the future.They have two children. Plath struggles to separate herself from wife and motherhood in order to express something relevant. Sylvia confirms her suspicions that Ted is having an affair, whereupon they separate – but not before she burns some of his belongings. One could say that this behavior is outrageous – however, so is having an affair while married. However, as a student of psychoanalysis, Plath comes to the realization that she, in fact, had a hand in Ted's adultery; insisting that she "conjured" it – essentially willing it into existence. It is an interesting point that is rarely explored in this type of film. That Plath would take the entire blame for her husband's adultery suggests that at the base of suffering from depression and mental illness is a low level of self esteem and self worth, coupled with the inability to differentiate fantasy from reality. This could be why the heartbroken, 29 year old Sylvia embarked upon her extraordinary journey of self-expression, also perhaps prompting her to arrange for a brief coupling with her estranged husband. However, this last ditch attempt at reconciliation is dashed when Ted informs her that the woman he has been having an affair with is pregnant. While he could have decided to reunite with his wife, it is clear that he had no intention to do so. For the already emotionally fragile Plath, this had to be a major devastation.During her marital estrangement, Plath wrote some of her most compelling masterpieces. Unable to reconcile her life, Ted's betrayal and the end of her marriage, Plath gassed herself at 31 years old in the kitchen after setting out food and taping her children's door to protect them. After her death, her final collection, Ariel was published, as were the books Crossing the Water and Winter Trees in 1971. As is the case with many artists, her work became ever more notable, garnering the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for a book of her Collected Poems.

Syl The life of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes was a complicated relationship. They were both poets. Sylvia was far more brilliant but totally tortured by her own inner demons. Perhaps, she would have been treated today for mental illness with counseling and medication. Sadly, Sylvia's suicide is fact and not fiction. She was still brilliant and promising but tortured by her inner demons of jealousy about her husband. Perhaps she had postpartum depression as well. Gwyneth Paltrow's performance of Sylvia Plath is a solid performance but it's weakened by poor writing. Daniel Craig does very well in playing her husband. I do enjoy seeing Blythe Danner in playing Sylvia's mother. Poetry is perhaps the most difficult of all writing and takes various forms. It's not surprising that Sylvia Plath had done her finest work solo but she was a gentle soul. I enjoyed seeing Sir Michael Gambon as her landlord. Like I wrote, I felt better improved writing could have helped turn this film into an Academy Award nominated performance by Gwyneth Paltrow. Also, the film was shot on location in New Zealand rather than England or America.

Dave from Ottawa There is a certain type of undergraduate who sees Sylvia Plath as the victim-heroine of a period that lionized talented men but had no place for women of similar gifts, and fortunately this film does not pander to them. Poets rarely receive lavish acclaim or wealth during their lifetimes, and hers was at least equal to her talent and irrespective of her gender. Any reasonably critical reader of her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar can see evidence of serious mental illness, which in Plath's case went largely untreated, and this film chooses to focus more on that aspect of her life than on anti-feminist conspiracy theories. However, the film comes up short of fully showing Plath as the highly complex and contradictory person her contemporaries knew: sexy, seductive yet so harsh and venal in her judgments of men (especially her husband and her father) as to seem man-hating; also manipulative and vain and yet so insecure that she went long periods without writing. She was likely bi-polar and could on occasion be described as downright monstrous, yet the film hollywoodizes Plath into a more conventional 'troubled' melodrama heroine, rather than delving deeper into the brutal reality of the day-to-day life of someone with significant mental illness. This is surprising given that director Christine Jeffs' earlier film on mental illness, Rain, was unstintingly honest. Plath's well known life history is covered in straightforward biopic narrative: her close-distant, love-hate yo-yo relationship with her mother; her famous first suicide attempt and the subsequent year spent in a sanatorium that was the basis for The Bell Jar; her rocky marriage to British poet Ted Hughes that ended because of his infidelity; her prolific period as a celebrated poet and her eventual death by suicide while still young.I should point out that I thought the cinematography and production design were wonderful. The excellent period look is established by bleeding out bright color from every scene while giving it an amber tint like old photographs. The sets were almost hyper-realistic - cluttered, dim and claustrophobic with none of the romanticized shininess that Hollywood often lavishes on period dramas.