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 voice-over 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

Film biographies of cultural figures - art, music, literature - differ from those focused on great events and the men and women who either led others or contributed to the hallmarks of history. For a start, figures in the arts have nowhere near the broad drawing power of, say, a General Patton whose controversial larger than life war record is placed in a setting where there are many other important figures, all engaged in very documented and perennially debated actions.

In 1998, "Hilary and Jackie" explored alleged episodes in the short life of cellist Jacqueline Du Pre and her pianist, now also conductor, husband, Daniel Barenboim. Despite very very good acting the film was largely a descent into the basement of scurrilous storytelling by relatives of the dead musician. Whatever the truth of the claim that she bedded her sister's husband, the movie said nothing about the couple's meteorically brilliant early careers. It was slanted voyeurism writ large.

Director Christine Wells has taken a very different and insightful tack in exploring the life of poet Sylvia Plath and her marriage to Ted Hughes, a poet with laurels garnered while Ms. Plath was still starting up a not very steady ladder to recognition.

Plath, an American, met Hughes in England. A short courtship was followed by marriage and then two children. The relationship was tumultuous and eventually it foundered because of Sylvia's underlying emotional instability followed by her husband's desertion to another woman.

Sylvia had tried suicide at least once before meeting Hughes and she succeeded in 1963, not that many years after they met. Whatever fame she achieved in her life has been eclipsed by what can only be described as a cottage industry of people studying her relationship with Hughes, an activity more important to some than her very fine poems and her most famous book, a novel, "The Bell Jar." In short, the real Sylvia Plath, whoever she was, has been hijacked.

Wells takes a sympathetic view of Ted and Sylvia, not joining in the political debate over feminism and Sylvia's supposed maltreatment by Ted. Sylvia in this film is brilliant but also terribly brittle and her inner demons are not caused by a brutish or callous husband. As Platrow portrays her, I believe accurately, Sylvia was seriously and chronically depressed with life events worsening but in no regard initiating a downward spiral. Today she would probably thrive and be both prolific as a poet and happy as a person if successfully maintained on an effective anti-depressant.

Ted, played by Daniel Craig, is a bit transparent - loving but somewhat distanced by his own quest for fame. He hectors Sylvia to write more, annoyed that she bakes instead of composing verse while on a seaside vacation. He's supportive but also blind to the deepening reality that he is dealing with a woman who needs help, not critical comments about non-productivity.

The supporting cast is fine but this is Paltrow and Craig's film. She has a strong affinity for England and its culture (I believe she has moved there) and she gives the role deep conviction and understanding. It happens that she somewhat resembles Sylvia but the true recognition is internal and intellectual. And emotional, let's not omit that.

Hughes essentially inherited his wife's estate and there's no question that he, like Daniel Barenboim after Jacqueline Du Pre's death, received a mixed blessing. He superintended the posthumous publication of "Ariel," one of Sylvia's most enduring legacies. A man who only wanted to be a first-rate poet, he became (and still is post mortem) the subject of arguments as to his treatment of Sylvia and his responsibility for her taking her life.

"Sylvia" sets the record straight as Paltrow acts the part of a woman - mother as well as poet - who slowly loses control of her life while her husband reacts first with confusion and later with the self-protective armor of withdrawal.

Hughes went on to publish many fine poems and he became poet laureate of England, a post he definitely wanted and enjoyed (Hughes was one of the very few modern and relatively young intellectuals who was a convinced monarchist).

Not long before succumbing to cancer, Hughes published "Birthday Letters," an attempt to show through years of verse the nature of his relationship with Sylvia. Whether viewed as an apologia or a last record - and chance - to give his side, it's an impressive work. And "Ariel's Gift" by Erica Wagner is must reading for those who want more than a film and sometimes potted articles can provide. It analyzes the poets' relationship through the prism of Hughes's writings, most unpublished before "Birthday Letters." A recent book, "Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, Portrait of a Marriage," by Diane Middlebrook, is also recommended.

Incidentally, the film accurately shows Sylvia's suicide preparations which included putting breakfast next to her little kids' beds before opening their window wide and sealing their door so the gas she employed to dispatch herself wouldn't harm them. I've read articles where her adulators remark on this as evidence of her loving and solicitous nature. Rubbish. The gas supplied at that time would have blown the whole building sky high if anyone, through ringing a doorbell or smoking a cigarette, had introduced a spark into her flat. Anyone surviving such a suicide attempt under those facts would surely be prosecuted today.

The film score is very intrusive, signaling when important things are happening. The dialogue and Paltrow and Craig's faces do that very well.

9/10.

I am pretty familiar with Plath's story, and am also a keen fan of her work, which i think contributed to my hesitancy in seeing the film. I did not have high hopes for this film at all, and honestly, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised.

My main criticisms:

I found it hard to get past the whole 'Oooh look it's Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath'. Someone who isn't famous on a global scale would have been more credible.

The whole premise of the film hinges on the deep passionate relationship of Plath and Hughes, yet I never really felt convinced by it. The relationship came across as quite two dimensional, and even pretty one sided on the part of Paltrow/Plath. Instead of being portrayed as an emotionally fragile woman driven to the edge by Hughes' constant philandering and ultimate betrayal, Plath actually seemed to come across as being deeply insecure and neurotic, constantly suffering from extreme PMT, and overreacting every time she saw Hughes even talking to another woman, rather than having genuine reason to suspect his infidelity.

There were a couple of key dramatic moments (such as after they have made love for the first time, and when they are out in the boat together) that felt very hammy, so disrupted the momentum of the piece.

The score is just awful. Totally totally overwrought, over the top, too loud and too much of it. Plus, as Paltrow/Plath really starts to lose her mind there is an almost constant sound of howling wind in the backgroud. Again, OTT. Less definitely would have been more.

HOWEVER

Ok, I complained about Paltrow above, but she really did a great job. She really is a very talented actress, and it is a shame the whole celebrity thing gets in the way. She was particularly fine in the latter stages of the film, and the sad descent into loneliness and irreversible depression was very well judged.

Likewise, Daniel Craig was very enigmatic, although I wonder whether the one sidedness of the relationship as mentioned above may have come from him.

As a whole the film was very sympathetic, and showed how hard it must have been for Hughes to live with Plath. It doesn't justify his behaviour but rather tries to show an understanding. It also evokes a sense of a time when poets were considered important.

This film stayed with me for some days after watching it, and I would recommend it. It is somewhat uneven in pace and direction, but I think Christine Jeffs is a director with talent, although her inexperience showed. But above all, it renewed my interest in both Plath and Hughes.

7/10

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** After being forewarned by the teenager selling tickets to "Sylvia"--"I hope you like 'depressing', 'cause this is REALLY depressing" ("Oh, I do, I do," I reassured him)--I spent the next 2 hours completely alone in the theater, which was somehow appropriate...

Paltrow was competent, Daniel Craig as Ted was appropriately brooding and charismatic. That said, I found the film to be little more than a series of mainly gloomy vignettes rather than a more accurately energetic glimpse into her actual life.

From everything I've read about Plath (all of her works, plus over 10 critical and/or biographical books), the woman was a crackling force of both manic and depressive energy--this film, on the other hand, almost completely ignores the manic life (and death) force in favor of a pervasive listlessness. Even the scenes that we know from Plath's journals happened in real-life are dulled-down here: Plath's bang-smash account of her sexually-charged initial meeting with Hughes, for instance, which we know resulted in tooth-marks on Hughes' face and his snatching her hair-band, is rendered as little more than a fairly polite dance and kiss in the movie--you get little sense of the urgency and excitement of their attraction. Another scene, rendered far more cinematically in Plath's journals and in Hughes' poem "Chaucer", is her enchantment of the local cows with her recitation of The Wife of Bath's Tale---in reality, the cows apparently gathered around her as she spoke, entranced by her voice, and Ted had to literally drive them away. When I read THEIR accounts, I could feel the magic of the odd situation; in the movie, though, Plath speaks a few lines to watching cows as she and Ted row past them on the river. Ho-hum.

While the two lived in Boston, Plath not only taught at Smith, but later entered weekly analysis, worked at a local mental hospital because Ted wouldn't get a job, and hung out with fellow poets at Lowell's weekly workshop, then got drunk with Anne Sexton, for one, afterwards. Again, that's all pretty darn cinematic; but in the movie, the Boston life consists primarily of a few seconds of Plath droning on before a class or two, then a scene of women gathering around Hughes after a reading. Yes, they do have a fight after Sylvia asks Ted if he f***ed (the movie's word) one woman; but her own written account of the scene was rather wild, with thrown glasses, her "getting hit" and seeing stars, etc., rather than the bland conversational incarnation of the incident that shows up here.

In London and Devon, too: In actuality, up 'til near the end, Plath was constantly in motion: setting up households, sending their work out, going to literary events, having babies, entertaining a myriad of friends and family and neighbors. Dido Merwin and Olwyn Hughes have both left testaments to Sylvia's sometime-hostility on occasion; Plath's own friends have left warmer accounts. Whatever the case, she was interacting with others, for better and worse, and much more interestingly than in this movie, wherein she mainly mopes around the house in a series of grim solitary poses. (PLEASE, I feel like begging, show her getting mad at Olwyn for smoking, or angrily striding out onto the moors after an argument at Ted's family's house, or yelling at Ted about the damn rabbit traps or his Ouija-predicted fame, or expressing her frustration at her mother's annoying visit. ANYTHING to portray an interesting, REAL person and to relieve the monotony of all the pseudo-artsy posing that goes on in the film.)

In short, this movie sucks every bit of life out of Plath, portraying her as a zombie-like character almost from the get-go, when in fact we know from reading her own words that there was actually a thinking, feeling, LIVING person on the premises up until the very end.

So intense ... Ms. Paltrow does not let your eye leave her from the moment she enters the frame... moment by moment she projects her feelings thoughts... almost painful to watch at times... you almost feel like you are watching Paltrow herself unravel on screen (boat on the ocean. I love Plath and I love Paltrow as Plath... she is heartbreaking and haunting just like the poetry the real Sylvia wrote. She unlike most actresses becomes a character and she became Sylvia Plath.

When I rented this movie, I thought it would be about Sylvia's entire life, or at least starting from her days at Smith College. I didn't realize that her marriage with Ted Hughes would be the entire storyline. I think this movie would've been better had they shown more about Plath's life BEFORE Ted Hughes. For people who don't really know much about Plath and her poetry, understanding her life before Hughes would've made the film much more substantial. The audience has to realize that Plath led a very, very hard mental life even before she met Hughes, and her ideas for her poetry and 'The Bell Jar' mostly originated from her bachelorette days. She never recovered from her depression as a young woman and it branched out still as she married Hughes. Without understanding Plath from the beginning hinders the audience from understanding Plath at all.

I feel like the movie only told half the story. Plath's mind was beautiful, colorful, and brilliant. It wasn't just about the jealousy, depression, and paranoia. Putting her works on the back burner really took away most of this movie. I would've liked to see more narration by Plath and giving us an insight into her mind, the way her unabridged journals do. However, I really enjoyed the dialogue of this movie; the lines were poetic and beautiful.

Unfortunately, I am still waiting for a better Sylvia Plath movie. I recommend people to read 'The Bell Jar' and 'Ariel' before or after seeing this movie though.

What makes poetry a special art form? Answers might include bringing together extremes of joy and despair within a couple of lines, offering an alternative to rational thought, enriching our outlook and understanding in ways that prose would struggle to equal. Poetry can provide a single phrase or sentence that is easily remembered and somehow unlocks difficult-to-express inner states, just as a song can (and poetry is the basis of songs). It offers a freedom of expression where you don't need to explain every aspect of what you are saying - it urges the listener to grasp a semi-spoken truth or idea.

That's my rough guess. I've got over 40 books of poetry on my bookshelf at the last count, yet I'm no literary expert and appreciate poetry in a very simple way. Most people might agree that poetry offers something special, so a film celebrating the life of a famous poet might be expected to bring us a glimmer of that something.

Sylvia Plath has been championed not only as a poet but as a sort of ‘feminist' – a cry on behalf of women treated as a commodity, subjugated by an unfair male-dominated system. Cast in the lead role, Gwyneth Paltrow's Plath focuses much attention on how downtrodden she was, chained to two children, overshadowed by a brilliant and celebrated Ted Hughes, struggling with bitterness, jealousy, mental instability and a less than attractive persona. We also get the occasional poetic outburst, from who-can-recite-poetry-fastest undergrad shenanigans to romanticised performances of Chaucer (addressed to an audience of watching cows whilst floating downstream in a boat). All punctuated with soft-focus shots of a naked Plath/Paltrow, hysterical and often violent outbursts at Hughes, and scenes of a generally uninteresting and uninspiring life of moderate wretchedness. The only thing that distinguishes Sylvia from the now-unfashionable kitchen sink drama is that its central character is called Sylvia Plath.

So is the film worthy of the title? In A Beautiful Mind, we learnt of the joy of mathematics, Lunzhin Defence championed the addictive mysteries of chess, and Dead Poets Society made us lift our eyes to literary horizons that could inspire the dullest of minds. Sylvia was limited, perhaps, by the refusal of her daughter to allow much of Plath's poetry to be used in the film but, for whatever reason, it has failed to be more than a rather humdrum biopic. It offers little insight into her poetry or the magic of poetry generally, and adds little of interest about the historical figure that doesn't apply to millions of women. If any deep philosophical statement can be drawn from this, the film certainly doesn't make it, poetically or otherwise. Sadly, it would seem that the words of Sylvia Plath's daughter almost became a self-fulfilling prophecy: "Now they want to make a film . .. They think I should give them my mother's words . . . To fill the mouth of their monster . . . Their Sylvia Suicide Doll." Whilst not quite an empty doll, Sylvia is maybe an arm or leg short of a manikin.

Rather dull and uninspired biography, even though Gwyneth does a good performance, she's unable to save a biography which probably will make your own life look exciting - Sylvia Plath is portrayed as not much more than a quite ordinary housewife that is cheated on over several years. The affairs of her husband Ted takes its toll, of course, and quite predictably drives her paranoia, but really; this is not film material. Ted Hughes comes across as a lame, rather brutal husband with little understanding of Sylvias troubled mind. Their story is told very straightforward and linear, probably wrong since there is very little story to begin with. A more adventurous structure, with glimpses of childhood, early years, etc might have added much needed lyricism to this lackluster project.

"Sylvia" is not quite just a slow, straightforward bio-pic of poet Sylvia Plath. While screenwriter John Brownlow has a long background in TV documentaries, director Christine Jeffs has previously made a young woman's mental disquiet dreamily visual in the superb New Zealand film "Rain."

She has her "Rain" cinematographer John Toon bathe the entire film in a nostalgia-tinged amber glow, like the extended flashbacks to the young lovers in the Australian film "Innocence." I think the point is to determinedly place Plath and her husband poet Ted Hughes into their specific time at the cusp before "The Feminine Mystique" put a name to Plath's frustrations and contradictions as a Fulbright scholar - experimental poet turned wife and mother who ultimately turned on herself. ("Mona Lisa's Smile" with Julia Roberts will evidently be dealing with a parallel time and place in a much more Hollywood interpretation.)

As played alternatively languid and aggressive by Gwyneth Paltrow and a Byronic Daniel Craig, they are an actively sensual couple, but notably not Bohemian. They are part of an intellectual but not counter-cultural set. While they are competing for editors' accolades and print space, she's setting her hair, arranging her pearls and cleaning house, like a proper Smith graduate of the time who is perfectly at home visiting her Boston mother (played by real-life mom Blythe Danner) and amidst the books of her late bee scholar father (My friend the PhD in English tells me that the original film title of "The Bee-Keeper's Daughter" would have been fraught with much more significance about Plath's obsessions.)

Hughes celebrates his first big break by asking her to marry him and kids follow one after the other; when they need money he looks to write a children's series for the BBC. Yes, she gets more and more difficult and paranoid, but he is having affairs (and another child) as he attracts more fawning women acolytes.

An earlier suicide effort is referenced a couple of times yet her increasingly heightened mental imbalance as shown here could be post-partum depressions or a Laingian response that insanity is the only rational response to an insane, unfair world. (The film does not seem to side with her loyalist cult which Margaret Atwood satirizes in "The Blind Assassin").

It is always difficult to show a writer at work, but I would have liked to hear more of her poetry than a few passing sentences.

Gabriel Yared's music is lovely and unsentimental.

I saw this movie and was really stunned. I am shocked that it has received such bad reviews because I think this is an amazing film. I understand Plath fans being upset that it does not go into detail with Sylvia's life, but this is a movie about the love of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes- Not the life of Sylvia Plath. It is a beautifully made movie. Paltrow does a phenomenal job of showing Sylvia's pain. She gives a great image of the torment Plath went through. The love story is both alluring and fascinating. Its so beautiful. I really cant say anything bad about this movie. I absolutely loved it, and it has not received the recognition it deserves.

I feared that "Sylvia" would be (in Plath's terms) a potboiler. It showed signs at the beginning that it was going to be the story of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes in the style of "the Bold and the Beautiful". In the first scene Sylvia is a blonde with a curled pageboy. Her mother's house looks like a mansion, complete with a library and uniformed waiters arranging flowers on buffet tables.

But the film didn't continue in that style, which is a bit of a shame, since if it had it would have been highly entertaining. The beach scenes were stunningly shot and they showed effectively the beginnings of Sylvia's difficulties in finding a voice as a writer. Unfortunately the script jumps immediately from Sylvia baking cakes because she is blocked creatively to suspecting her husband is jumping her students.

The Hughes/Plath controversy is fueled by biographies which are sympathetic to either party, portraying Plath as a bunny boiler who accuses Hughes of humping around until he leaves, or Plath as a victim of a marauder who suppresses her poetry and mentally tortures her, especially by bedding every admirer who throws herself at him. The script of "Sylvia" appears to be written by someone who is in the "poor Ted, what he had to put up with" camp, but I'm not entirely certain. Hughes in the early British scenes is brilliant at reciting poetry and delighting Sylvia by suggesting that cows prefer Chaucer over Milton. Once the couple are in the States Hughes' personality empties to riling her mother's friends and leaving Sylvia on her own for hours, presumed humping around. After they move to England, Hughes becomes hollow. He's a cardboard figure who people like the critic at the party envy and women supposedly go gaga over – but we never see this. Is the audience meant to believe it was all in Plath's mind until she told Hughes to leave? For the most part the film suggests the history described in the many biographies. I don't think that people who are unfamiliar with the biographies would understand that Sylvia in her rages tears up Hughes' notes for his writing projects as well as his books. According to many accounts, she burnt the manuscript of her novel Falcon Yard in a bonfire she started in Devon after Hughes left: the scene in the film shows her burning papers but doesn't indicate what she is burning.

"Sylvia" made me groan by turning the last hour into slush that distorts the events of the end of Plath's life. She met her downstairs neighbor only once, the night before she committed suicide. He was the last person to see her alive. She did ask for stamps and he did open the door again to find her in the hallway. However, the scenes in which she asks for his help in the power cut and later when she breaks down at his door are invention. Plath and Hughes met on occasions after their marriage broke down and she moved to London with the children, but there is no evidence that she asked him if they could get back together. Alvarez described in a memoir that she read her work to him and he gave her feedback about some of her most famous poems. The scene I found most insulting to Plath is the one in which the fictional Sylvia blurts out to the Alvarez character that she is thinking of taking a lover. On Christmas Eve 1962 Plath invited Alvarez to her apartment for a drink and she wore her hair down. Alvarez felt her loneliness; however, any needs she might have had were unspoken. It's true that Alvarez had also tried to commit suicide: but the dialogue in the scene in which his character lectures her about death is largely unconvincing as well as apocryphal.

"Sylvia" is uncertain about which audience it wants to appeal to: the students who are assigned Plath in high school and college, sympathizers with Hughes, the Biography Channel, or audiences who want a four handkerchief love story. Ultimately it doesn't succeed as a portrait of Plath: it glosses over the difficulties she had as a writer and her achievement in writing the Ariel poems. It has only one scene with Sylvia's mother, although the relationship Plath had with her mother was instrumental throughout her life. I doubt that anyone will come away from the film with any idea of Hughes' work, his achievements as a poet (he became the British Poet Laureate) , or what happened to him after Plath died (a few years afterward Assia Wevill killed herself and the daughter she had with Hughes). It isn't a melodrama but it skims over Sylvia's struggles with depression. It certainly doesn't help the movie that the script doesn't give more than a sample line of some of Plath's poems. I heard that the producers were legally prevented from using longer excerpts from Plath's work, but they could have featured more poetry than a few quotes from Chaucer and Yeats' "The Sorrow of Love". It doesn't go into enough depth for a love story or for Scenes From a Marriage, Times Literary Supplement style.

"Sylvia" is the airplane movie of Plath's life. It flies over the major events, and I think it would be best enjoyed on a plane when there's no other entertainment on offer. That said, I thought the set and costume design was outstanding – aside from the maternal mansion. The student housing of 1950s Britain and the limited budget that Sylvia and Ted had as a married couple are deftly depicted. The details of their apartments and their house in the early 1960s are brilliantly captured, down to the instructions in the red phone booth and the telephone that Sylvia pulls from the wall. It's a pity that the movie doesn't explore the details of Plath's life as tellingly as it does her surroundings, and the cakes she bakes.

There is a school of rather Philistine thought that espouses the proposition that the world needs poetry like a goldfish needs a pair of Nikes.Judging from other comments on "Sylvia" this is not a view shared by many of those who took the trouble to write about it,but perhaps it should be remembered the the mainstream moviegoer may consider it a little - well,perhaps esoteric is the word I'm looking for. It should not be a cause for great surprise therefore that it was hardly a box-office smash.Ostensibly a film about two self-absorbed,not particularly likable Cambridge graduates who screw each others lives up whilst poncing about in punts is going to appeal mainly to those to whom poncing about in punts is either an ambition or a fond memory. As you may have gathered from the aforegoing I am in no way qualified to discourse on the works of Mr Hughes and Ms Plath,but as human beings they had a shitload of problems.They were two people who should never have been allowed within a hundred miles of one another,their marriage swiftly became a disaster waiting to happen. Marital infidelity,mental decline,depression and suicide followed all too swiftly,establishing Ms Plath as an icon of the Feminism movement and reassuring its followers that all men are indeed bastards. "Sylvia" is competently enough made in most departments all though like other reviewers I found the use of music tiresome on several occasions. What it lacks is something to pull it out of the usual "two poets in love but destroying each other "rut.If Ted and Sylvia could have been played by Robert Mitchum and Lana Turner and Douglas Sirk persuaded to direct them I would have happily paid good money to see it.

After viewing the film on Sylvia Plath, I felt a need to read about this poet and find out exactly what Hollywood did with it. As usual, Hollywood transformed a person's life into what an audience would want to be amused by. Mr. Hughes is personified as a womanizer and adulterer, the later of which may be true. After reading two biographies of Ms. Plath by Linda W. Wagner-Martin and Anne Stevenson and of course having studied Ms. Plath's poetry, I feel that the film, albeit entertaining does not depict her actual identity. It does a marginal account of her life, or part of her life. As any human being, Ms. Plath suffered from many demons. If you ascribe to an astrological standpoint (as Mr. and Mrs. Hughes did) you will find that Sylvia was doomed by her astrological sign, Scorpio. Those of you who are Scorpios know that there is a dark side to this sign. She set her expectations too high of most things and considered the failure of loyalty from her friends and family detrimental. Her experiences with depression only added fuel to the flame. Had she lived in modern times, maybe the newer therapies could have helped her. Depression is a severe affliction and may make a great poet, but for everyday living it can render a person helpless. It can make one helpless with dealing with marriage and children, life in general, and one's occupation. Sylvia Plath was a victim of her depression, her personality overreacting to life and her relationships. Unfortunately, she could not work her way through her inner problems and suffered the result of her mental blockage. Fortunately, for her children, they were unharmed by her mental illness and subsequent actions, and were eventually raised by their father. No one is to blame... no one is superhuman. If standards are set too high for anyone, as Sylvia set for herself, anyone is doomed to failure. We do have her poetry and novel(s) to see her inner self, which no film can properly depict.

To say the least, I was not impressed. Others have commented already on the distracting musical score, lack of sufficient information for non-Plath fans (i.e., the person sitting next to the Plath-fan!), uninteresting and quite common marriage problems, etc., etc.

Despite Paltrow's interesting portrayal of Plath and cinematographic quality, the film did not explore the complexities of Plath by any means to explain the tagline of "Life was too small to contain her." Even a Plath-fan can't get that impression from the film. Aside from which, the title change from "Ted and Sylvia" to just "Sylvia" was not justified by the screenplay. The impact of not being permitted to use more of Plath's poetry throughout the film is significant.

It is completely reasonable for non-Plath fans to give a low score to the film, but thoroughly disappointing to be a Plath-fan and have to give it a low score of 5.0/10.0.

Re: Oscars - who cares? I would guess that if Sissy Spacik got nominated for "In the Bedroom", then Gwyneth is a shoe-in for this year.

If you are like most people, you know little about Sylvia Plath other than the basic facts - that she was a mid 20th century poet who committed suicide. And according to this biopic - based on Plath's life - that suicide didn't occur a minute too soon. Plath, played by Gwenyth Paltrow, is depicted as a friendless (OK, she did have one friend in her students days - after that, all of her social connections were her husband's friends), self-absorbed, loudmouthed, unbearable woman.

The Plath in this film spends little time writing. Instead, most of her energy is spent staring into space, rocking back and forth (perhaps the filmmakers confused being ARTistic with being AUTistic), pouting, baking cakes that she never ate (she never gains an ounce, and even after two children, retains her perky, slender figure), slogging through muddy fields (don't they have any grass in England?) and snowy walkways (doesn't anyone know how to use a shovel?), ripping up her husband's poems, breaking dishes and weeping - with one single, quivering teardrop eternally hanging from the end of her patrician nose.

The art direction is so heavy-handed and loaded with symbolism that just looking at the film is enough to cause depression. In nearly every scene, Plath is dressed in heavy plaid wool skirts and bulky sweaters in dreary shades of brown and green (with a wardrobe like that, who wouldn't want to kill themself?). She sports a wide range of messy, unflattering hairdos. Her homes (a variety of them) all feature dim rooms (didn't anyone know how to turn on a lamp?) with lumpy plaster walls smeared with heavy coats of high gloss paint in shades of mustard yellow, grayish green and dull brown. The sky is leaden. Trees are barren. Dying leaves swirl in the wind. Birds caw. Plath tears up manuscripts and burns her husband's books and clothes ... where? In yet another muddy field.

We are given little insight into Plath's mind, career or concerns. She appears obsessively jealous of her husband's professional success and consumed by his casual affairs (some of which appear to have occurred only in Plath's imagination). Moments after meeting Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig), her husband-to-be, Plath bites him, leaving him with blood smeared on his cheek. Shortly thereafter, Plath declares that she was happy until her father died when she was a child, and that she had already attempted suicide before she reached puberty. What tortures was she trying to escape?

When the newlywed Hughes' visit America, we are shown a glimpse of her childhood home - which, in contrast to Plath's own residences, looks charming, cozy, bright and cheerful - and her distant, judgmental mother (played by Paltrow's real-life mother, Blythe Danner). We see her at a party to celebrate the publication of her first book, angry and distracted by the attention her husband is receiving from women in the next room. But who was Sylvia Plath? What drove her? And how did she manage to support herself and her children, since she didn't appear to hold a job or do any successful writing?

The real Plath was a prolific poet who adored children and even wrote a delightful book about a little boy and his wonderful suit of clothes. For the film Plath, her children are mere afterthoughts - although they are rarely shown (and the older, for reasons not mentioned, never seemed to grow an inch), they never complain. In fact, they rarely speak at all, not even when they are wandering through the endless muddy fields in their muddy bedroom slippers.

As Plath, Paltrow has only two briefly nurturing, motherly moments - a dreary Christmas celebration, when she and the children decorate a tiny, nearly barren tree with homemade ornaments and she nuzzles one of the kids - and the time she spends preparing a snack, cracking open the kids' bedroom window, and taping their door closed before sticking her head in the oven and cranking up the gas. But long before Sylvia starts smearing that final knife full of butter on bread, you'll find yourself muttering, "Hurry up and kill yourself so we can go home."

I am terrified to believe that the millions of people who watched this movie without actually understanding who Sylvia Plath was, her intellect, her raw and beautifully successful poetry, will come away from this movie thinking she was an untalented, petty, nagging, weak, depressed housewife who never came up with a single poem. The biggest error that Jeffs made while making this movie was excluding Plath's personal thoughts and perspective. There is a plethora of information in her journals. The Most Important part of Plath was her mind. Exluding her thoughts from the movie was similar to coring out the essence of who Plath was. Biographical information is incorrect. Random scenes are put together simply so Plath (Paltrow, who was not impressive, but this is due to the horrible script)could artificially reminisce about her suicide attempt. The only thing this film did well was portray Ted Hughes' malignant betrayal and unfaithfulness. Sylvia Plath DID NOT forgive him. If you saw the movie forget everything you saw and read a friggen book.

This is a movie where the actors try hard, really hard but cannot overcome the script. The problem with this movie is that the character of Sylvia is not very sympathetic. Sylvia alienates everybody around her with her abrasiveness, especially toward her husband. Her behavior is never really explained. Why should we care about this woman? She seems to flip out too soon in the movie and too often for no reason whatsoever. I know Gweenth Paltrow got acclaim for this movie, but she has been in much better movies to bother with this one. Note to Hollywood: between this and the overrated The Hours, movies based on real female authors are not automatically interesting. In both films, we don't care the writers because the story doesn't make them interesting.

The performers were excellent, the story, very good. Would recommend seeing this film more than once to get a good feel for it, as it seemed disjointed on my first viewing. Even better the second time around. But be prepared-this is not a happy story. Most scenes are dark and dreary, with a moody score for emphasis, so don't expect sunshine and light. But for what it is, and what they had to work with, I would have to say-Great job!

It's 1956 Cambridge, England. American student Sylvia Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow) is dismissed by the high-minded poetry review. She is taken with fellow student Edward Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig)'s poems. They eventually get married. He has many female fans and she suspects his infidelity. They have two children. She struggles to write under successful Ted's overwhelming shadow. She falls into depression and eventually commits suicide in 1963.

It's a downbeat biopic that bothers on old-fashion melodrama. Paltrow is lovely but I figured Plath would be more fragile even before her breakdown. Daniel Craig has the prerequisite charisma. The movie is very flat. It is unable to elevate the material into something more dramatic. This is a long drawn out character study that isn't terribly interesting.

I watched this movie as suggested by a friend, knowing nothing about the poetess Sylvia Plath, except some biographical hints, which can be a fault (in the sense of a too much unconscious and unprepared approach) but also an advantage, since you are in a condition to judge the movie for what it is and without any prejudice. I perceived the movie as a delicate, intelligent, and artfully crafted portrait of a woman, whose inner psychological distress overwhelmed her and affected her artistic life so much as to become one thing with it.

What I certainly appreciated is the modest and almost detached attitude the director chose to deal with the theme, the never excessive underlining of too torturing traits of the poetess' s grieve. What the viewer gets is the portrait of a delicate, too sensitive, but innerly tortured woman, without having to face too much, as a form of respect towards the woman and her painful life, as if (and indeed it is), depression and mental disorder were something belonging to such depth of a soul that trying to render it too explicitly becomes a misleading, fake, if not disrespectful attempt; the final result being intense but never obtrusive.

A little underdeveloped, maybe, is the relationship with the mother, and in general we are not given he chance to know much about Sylvia's childhood, when her mental problems began to trouble her, but on the whole the movie is well focused and gets to render the complexity of her personality: strong and weak, self-confident and depressed, longing for life but falling into an always evoked death. A movie that gets also to stimulate the reading of her works, and that's, I believe, a great result. Gwyneth Paltrow is really convincing, intense, but always contained, David Craig as Ted Hughes also offers a mature and good performance.

Not really disappointing viewing, given I was well aware of the critical and commercial caning this copped on release, but as a fan of Plath I was left wistfully wanting more. A more appropriate title for Christine Jeffs' film would have been "Ted and Sylvia" as we only pick up poet Sylvia Plath's (Gwyneth Paltrow) life from the time when she met fellow poet Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig). The film charts the passionate yet rocky relationship of the literary couple, with Hughes' extra-marital affairs and Plath's mental instabilities causing the marriage to breakdown. We all know how it ends of course, with Plath's suicide.

"Sylvia" has much of the same problems that the recent John Maybury film looking at Dylan Thomas' life and loves, "The Edge Of Love", had. At times its beautiful and haunting, but really just inconsequential overall. We spend so much time with Plath and Hughes but we never really get close to either of them. Plath was not just a tragic talent, her poetry and novel are filled with disturbing, blunt images but also a great raw passion for experience and life. The film becomes a dreary look at adultery rather than showing us anything new about Plath, or her relationship with Hughes. Paltrow and Craig are rather good in their roles, but are let down by the writing (how ironic!)The film goes around in circles but we never really get anywhere.

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.

As a young woman, poetess Sylvia Plath meets the fiery Ted Hughes because of one of his poems catching her eye and deeply impressing her. So begins their life together that continues with marriage and the inevitable onset of domestication. As a woman this affects Sylvia more than it seems to affect Ted and she finds herself struggling to write as she balances home life with working as a teacher. Things are made worse by Ted, who has the first of many affairs with a student from Sylvia's class. As the pressures of family and children going to grow, so does Sylvia's mistrust of Ted and paranoia over his behaviour.

When a film is loudly disowned by the child of the subject you do have to approach it with a certain amount of caution and, although I'm not sure why Frieda Hughes took against it, I suspect it is because of the very event-based approach of this film. In a film that shows us how Sylvia was pushed down and had her talent smothered one way or another, it is ironic that the script does something similar by failing to let us understand her poetry, her character or her talent. Instead what we are treated to is a story that shows her being oppressed and beaten down. Now I accept that this is supposedly essentially true, but by ignoring her fame I imagine that this could be seen as just piling more on top of the lot she had while she was alive. It also has the effect of turning a biopic into a relationship melodrama that slowly plods along, pushing Plath down until the ending we know is coming. It is still reasonably interesting but I didn't feel that I learnt anything specific about Plath other than the fact that she was with a man that wasn't particularly good for her – which puts her in the company of a lot of woman; the difference between her and them was her poetry but the film doesn't seem too bothered about this.

The upside of this is that Paltrow is best in the role when she is being downtrodden and oppressed; when she is asked to do something other than this then she seems less sure of her character and is less able – at least depressed she seems to know what is required of her. Craig is as reliable as usual and does well even if his character is not exactly layered or that complex. The support is mostly pretty good, although I didn't understand what attracted Michael Gambon to such a small role, but the film pretty much belongs to Paltrow, who takes to her downtrodden well.

Overall this was an average film that plays out like a relationship melodrama and didn't do much to help me understand the character or talent of Plath other than showing me what happened within her relationship with Hughes. I can understand why her children objected to this simplification of their mother because personally I would not want to be remembered for my suffering if I had such talent. Paltrow and Craig are both good with the relationship material but the film should have been much better than it was.

I generally give high marks to good movies based on real people. Examples are "Beautiful Mind" and "Longitude." This movie, "Sylvia", is based on a real person, poet Sylvia Plath, but it certainly is not one of my favorites. Paltrow has created a wonderful character but she and her life are not terribly interesting. As I watched it I thought, "How can one expect to go through life simply wanting to write poetry?" It seems very insignificant, compared to careers that invent things, or help humanity in various ways. So, the fact that Plath was mostly a mediocre poet, greatly overshadowed by her husband's writings, is not of great interest to me. It was interesting to see Paltrow's real mother, Blythe Danner, play Sylvia's mother in the movie. It was also good to the Michael Gambon in a small but significant role.

SPOILERS. Sylvia and Ted Hughes had a torrid relationship, and were married rather quickly and moved from England to the Northeastern USA. Sylvia wrote mediocre poetry that often received mixed or poor reviews, and she taught high school, while Ted was receiving rave reviews. Sylvia was not only mediocre, but she didn't realize that she was. Ted, unable to write in the USA, moved them back to England. His wandering eye resulted in an affair, which tore up their marriage after the second child arrived, but inspired passion in Sylvia that turned her into a better poet. They tried to reconcile much later, but he had gotten his mistress pregnant and wouldn't agree to quit seeing her. Despondent Sylvia, in her 30s, sealed off her children's bedroom door to protect them while they slept, and she killed herself with gas from the kitchen stove. After her death, her book received great reviews and became a best-seller. It is ironic that the very thing which turned her into a superb poet also killed her.

Spoilers

This summary line is something that I was still unable to answer after I had finished watching the movie. Many people have mentioned that not enough of Sylvia Plath the poet is shown in the movie, partly because her daughter does not grant the rights to most of her poems to the filmmakers. Maybe that's the reason why the movie ended up closer to being melodrama than an ode to poetry (as Dead Poet Society is).

What cannot be denied, however, is the dominating theme of Sylvia's jealousy. There is first the young student in a nocturnal call to bring some of her work to Ted Hughes, Plath's husband, and the business meeting he has with this BBC personage who is a `middle-aged woman', he explains. Finally these alleged affairs turn real, with Assia Wevill, fellow-poet and friend. Most significant is what Sylvia says to the old gentleman in the flat below, `I conjure her up', referring to her jealousy finally becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the end, one cannot escape leaving the cinema with a profound sadness for Sylvia, whether as an unfulfilled poet (at least not when she was alive) or just an ordinary person with marital problems. One is also reminded of what Shaw said about the `tyranny of the flesh', about human beings' final prayer being reduced to `make me a healthy animal' (Man and Superman). Early in the movie, when Ted suggests moving back from The States to London, Sylvia `What do we live on?' The frustration is later accentuated with Sylvia trying to write against the sound of the wailing baby in the crib.

There has always been general consensus that Gwyneth Paltrow is perfect for the role of Sylvia Plath, long before this movie becomes a reality. The end result convincingly demonstrates the validity of this assertion.

The beauty of the cinematography deserves mentioning. In the early part, we see the romantically beautiful, sunny New England coast. Then, for a complete change in mood, the camera captures the melancholic, foggy Devon countryside. Finally, the one shot that haunts me is the angry cove where Sylvia is on the verge of walking out into the waves to end her life, leaving her two children in the car.