Watch Sylvia For Free

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Boring

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

After reading "The Bell Jar," I decided to watch this movie, which for some reason I thought would be a film adaptation of "The Bell Jar" - though maybe I thought that because that book is Plath's most famous work.The movie has nothing to do with "The Bell Jar" except for the few seconds in which Sylvia tells Edward about how she tried to kill herself when she was younger. The rest of the movie seems to be about the couple's drama, and I say "seems" because I skipped most of it to save my brain from the boredom and to get to the part where Sylvia kills herself, at which point the door to the kitchen closes and we can't see her going through with it anyway.Gwyneth Paltrow does a great job but she was the wrong person for this role because the whole time I'm not thinking "There's Sylvia," but rather, "There's Paltrow playing Sylvia."

"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

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.

This could have been a made for television movie, but it's a BBC movie, so you know it's going to be better anyway. Gwyneth shines, as does her mum, and everybody is very very good. There's just one issue.Daniel Craig. The next James Bond. You can't understand a word he says. He mumbles. Incoherently. He hasn't any diction at all. You'd almost want to ring him and suggest he take the Demosthenes cure.His diction is so bad that only a single line in the movie comes across as distinct - and even that takes an effort on the part of the viewer. Something remotely reminiscent of the following.'I've been told you're taking pills.'And before and after that you'd swear there was mud in the sound system when he speaks.There's one scene in the movie where Paltrow and then Craig recite poems of their own at breakneck speed. Paltrow is intelligible even if she's hurtling through it so fast you can't really comprehend, but Craig is just a succession of pseudo-vocal grunts and other assorted sounds.Think back to that very first Bond scene where 007 was first introduced. The casino. In London. Where Bond is fleecing Sylvia Trench at the chemin de fer table. And shiver at the prospect that it's not Connery but Craig who delivers the famous line.'I admire your courage, Miss...?''Trench. Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr...?''Mumble. Mumble mumble.''WHO??!??'It's a sad story, and Paltrow doesn't portray her character as morbid and unsympathetic as some wannabe critics would have it, and the dynamic of the relationship between Plath and Hughes comes through with brilliant colouring, but it's a biopic. Some will love it, others hate it - and most will speculate how much more they could have enjoyed it had they understood anything Craig said.All of which is not to say Plath's poetry or poetry in general merits special recognition. The poetry of both Hughes and Plath comes across today as specious and pretentious. But all that can be overlooked with a thespian performance of the class of Gwyneth.