Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Prismark10 Once Ted Hughes died in 1998, it became open season to speculate as to what had happened in his short stormy tempestuous marriage with Sylvia Plath. Some people blame Hughes for Plath's suicide in 1963.The film begins when American Sylvia Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow) a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University where she meets acclaimed and passionate Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig) a man who lives for poetry.They quickly get married and initially move to the USA. Plath finds it difficult to write and Ted feels uncomfortable in America. They return to Britain, but Sylvia struggles with Ted's infidelity, his success as a writer while she raises two young children.However in time Sylvia starts to develop her own style of poetry which is based on her personal moods and state of mind.Craig gives a passionate performance as Hughes, he comes across as fiery, talented and a ladies man. Paltrow has a more difficult role as the vulnerable and neurotic Plath but she does well with what felt was an underwritten role. The film makes it clear that Plath had bouts of depression and even attempted suicide before she met Hughes.Sylvia cannot get a handle on the complexities of the characters that it is dealing with. In the end it treads a middle line neither blaming Hughes for Plath's death or absolving of any responsibility. The film does feel flat and undernourished. It was not helped that the Plath estate would not grant permission for the use of her writings in the movie.

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

refinexme 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.

sexyhelene The acting is not awful. Both Paltrow and Craig did quite a good job with their acting. The main problem of this film is that it did almost nothing to describe Plath's literary work or how her personal life affected her writing. The movie itself is basically a portrait of a failing marriage--the turbulent relationship between the couple and the husband's infidelity.One must understand that it is a challenge to make a biographical film on an artist (actor, writer, musician, or painter). This is because that not only is that artist being famous for his/her achievement in a special field, but also for his/her dramatic personal life. Here, the film focused heavily on Plath's unsuccessful marriage and a little on her poetry or her novel. Even the portrayal of the marriage is too one-sided. Obviously, Plath's loyal friends would have agreed with the film's depiction. Yet, Ted Hugh and his family might have some objections.I give this film 6/10. It is not a bad film. It is just not a film about a poet.