Sylvia (2003)
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 110m
Director: Christine Jeffs
Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Blythe Danner, Amira Casar
Synopsis:
Sylvia Plath meets Ted Hughes at Cambridge in the fifties, and finds her poetry is eclipsed when she is with him and life impossible without him.
Review:
The veteran already of two suicide attempts meets the womaniser: such is the hook, and the limitation of this beautifully crafted biopic. It confers narrative unity over a span of years (always a challenge) but reduces our view of Plath's genius to some voiceover fragments and a couple of positive reviews. The film does excel at getting inside Plath's head to an extent, thanks to Paltrow's performance and the later scenes with neighbour Michael Gambon, but it is hard to turn writers into memorable cinema - the decade saw similar recourse to their messy personal lives in Iris (Murdoch) and The Edge of Love (Dylan Thomas).
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 110m
Director: Christine Jeffs
Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Blythe Danner, Amira Casar
Synopsis:
Sylvia Plath meets Ted Hughes at Cambridge in the fifties, and finds her poetry is eclipsed when she is with him and life impossible without him.
Review:
The veteran already of two suicide attempts meets the womaniser: such is the hook, and the limitation of this beautifully crafted biopic. It confers narrative unity over a span of years (always a challenge) but reduces our view of Plath's genius to some voiceover fragments and a couple of positive reviews. The film does excel at getting inside Plath's head to an extent, thanks to Paltrow's performance and the later scenes with neighbour Michael Gambon, but it is hard to turn writers into memorable cinema - the decade saw similar recourse to their messy personal lives in Iris (Murdoch) and The Edge of Love (Dylan Thomas).
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 110m
Director: Christine Jeffs
Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Blythe Danner, Amira Casar
Synopsis:
Sylvia Plath meets Ted Hughes at Cambridge in the fifties, and finds her poetry is eclipsed when she is with him and life impossible without him.
Review:
The veteran already of two suicide attempts meets the womaniser: such is the hook, and the limitation of this beautifully crafted biopic. It confers narrative unity over a span of years (always a challenge) but reduces our view of Plath's genius to some voiceover fragments and a couple of positive reviews. The film does excel at getting inside Plath's head to an extent, thanks to Paltrow's performance and the later scenes with neighbour Michael Gambon, but it is hard to turn writers into memorable cinema - the decade saw similar recourse to their messy personal lives in Iris (Murdoch) and The Edge of Love (Dylan Thomas).