By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Christine Jeffs
Starring: Blythe Danner | Daniel Craig | Gwyneth Paltrow | Jared Harris | Michael Gambon
Country: united_kingdom
Year: 2003
Running time: 100
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325055/combined
Bruce says: “SYLVIA documents the last years of Sylvia Plath’s life, from the time she met and married Ted Hughes. While I liked this film, I found it more than a bit depressing. What was I expecting? It seems an impossible that anyone could write a script about Sylvia Plath’s later years and not end up with a depressing film. Her married life had very few highs and lots of lows. It is hard to build dramatic crescendos or infuse the biography with much contrast when the subject is on a downward spiral.
“The Bell Jar, her autobiographical novel published posthumously, has many comic moments amidst its darkness. But it takes place in her youth, around the time she was a summer intern at Conde Nast in New York City. It remains her most well known work.
“Gwenyth Paltrow delivers a solid performance as the tormented, paranoid poet. (This performance should silence her critics unless, of course, they happened to have seen A VIEW FROM THE TOP.) Daniel Craig is excellent as her frustrated – and probably womanizing – husband, Ted Hughes. Plath dearly loved Hughes and we get the sense that the love was mutual. It is unclear as to whether his affairs were the cause or the result of Sylvia’s accusations. A jealous woman she was. And not just of the other women in Ted’s life but of his stature as a published poet, a stature she did not yet have. Ariel her most famous collection of poems was also published after her death.
“In spite of the obvious problems, Sylvia does great justice to its subject. We end up with a sense of her madness, not an understanding. She committed suicide by sticking her head in the oven while her two small children were sleeping in the house. Who could understand a thing like that? 3.5 cats”