SYLVIA
Released in 2003 under the genre Biography/Drama,'Sylvia' chronicles the turbulent life of Poet Sylvia Plath, and her seven year marriage to her husband Ted Hughes Starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig.
The year is 1956 and the film opens with Sylvia ... Read review
Sylvia is based on the emotional true story of the passionate yet turbulent relationship ... more
between two of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Sylvia Plath (Paltrow) and Ted Hughes (Craig) shared an unbreakable bond of love which is beautifully p...
Escaping to England from a French embezzlement charge widower Henry Scarlett is ... more
accompanied by daughter Sylvia who to avoid detection "disguises" herself as a boy "Sylvester." They are joined by amiable con man Jimmy Monkley then after a brief career in crime meet Maudie Tilt a giddy sexy Cockney housemaid who joins them in the new venture of entertaining at resort towns from a caravan. Through all this amazingly no one recognizes that Sylvia is not a boy...until she meets handsome artist Michael Fane and drama intrudes on the comedy.
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Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
Production Year: 1999 - Drama, Thriller - Director: M. Night Shyamalan - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Olivia Williams, Glenn Fitzgerald, Mischa Barton, Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette
Advantages: Beautifully shot. Disadvantages: Slow, sometimes a little dreary, didn't cover her poetry enough.
=== SYLVIA ===
Released in 2003 under the genre Biography/Drama,'Sylvia' chronicles the turbulent life of Poet Sylvia Plath, and her seven year marriage to her husband Ted Hughes Starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig.
The year is 1956 and the film opens with Sylvia talking about a dream she had. In the dream she had likened herself to a tree ... ...strange and twisted feelings that Sylvia bore for her father. She likened him to a German Nazi, and the relationship with her father had a huge bearing on her life. Sylvia is American and had started to write poetry seriously, though it is not honed in any particular style as yet. We see her at Cambridge University, enjoying campus life and all it has to offer. She appears to be reasonably happy at this point of her life, and she tries to get her ... more
SYLVIA
Released in 2003 under the genre Biography/Drama,'Sylvia' chronicles the turbulent life of Poet Sylvia Plath, and her seven year marriage to her husband Ted Hughes Starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig.
The year is 1956 and the film opens with Sylvia talking about a dream she had. In the dream she had likened herself to a tree with branches outstretched. Each branch representing something about herself. One branch was her life, one branch, her husband, her children, and one branch, her glittering academic career. The leaves were her poems. As the dream closed the leaves had turned to brown and fluttered to the ground, and drifted away. This visceral dream seems to encapsulate Sylvia's state of mind in all it's complexities. -
Such was Sylvia's ( Gwyneth Paltrow) melancholic personality. She viewed life with a mournful eye. Her father had died when she was 9 and his death had a profound effect upon her. Anyone who has read her brilliant poem 'Daddy', will realise the strange and twisted feelings that Sylvia bore for her father. She likened him to a German Nazi, and the relationship with her father had a huge bearing on her life. Sylvia is American and had started to write poetry seriously, though it is not honed in any particular style as yet. We see her at Cambridge University, enjoying campus life and all it has to offer. She appears to be reasonably happy at this point of her life, and she tries to get her poetry published by small local magazines. In one of the magazines her work is slated. They call her poetry bourgeois and commercial. As she reads the magazine she spots a poem by a man called Ted Hughes entitled 'Fallgriefs girlfriend', and she is very taken with the words and the style of his poetry.
At a jazz evening in town she meets Ted (Daniel Craig) and it is an instant chemistry, a meeting of poetic minds, and they fall in love, and so begins the turbulent seven year relationship of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Ted sees a scar on Sylvia's face and he asks her where she got it from. She tells him that she had taken sleeping pills three years previously, and she crawled into a hole in the cellar of her family home, and waited to die. Such is her delicate state of being. Sylvia is a complex, fragile, and suicidal character, life and death occupying most of her thoughts. Her poetry is dark, and difficult to analyse. This film is not so much the story of the life of Sylvia Plath, but more a tale of the notorious marriage between the two poets. This was her driving force and her ultimate destruction. Henceforth the film shows the effects that her marriage, Ted's rising career, her children, and mundane domesticity have on her as a person and a poet. Set in the1950's when women were struggling to be taken seriously and to get their voices heard. -
The immediate thing that strikes me about this film is it's breathtaking cinematography, with beautiful shots of the Cambridge scenery, and University, punts along the river Cam, and stunning use of the close up. The striking colouring used within the film with it's use of subdued palettes of greens reds, browns, and blues, bring a true beauty to the proceedings. Everything visual about this film is shot with beauty, and this is what held my attention for the 149 minutes. The film runs at a snails pace, but at no time was I bored, or my mind wandering. I was just caught up in the story about what drove Sylvia to her ultimate suicide attempt. This isn't a spoiler, as historically this is a well known fact. If this film is correct in it's portrayal of the events between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, it seems apparent to me, that his treatment of the emotionally fragile state of Sylvia did nothing to enhance her confidence in personality, with his many torrid affairs, going on under her very nose. Sylvia's initial irrational jealousy and vivid imagination may have driven Ted into infidelity, or maybe it would have happened anyway.
Ted Hughes was an attractive charismatic straight talking man, and this drew women to him like moths to a flame, and with his career as a poet more prominently respected and recognised by society of the day, Sylvia must have felt like a lesser poet than to that of her counterpart. Ted Hughes was portrayed extremely well by Daniel Craig and I could totally empathise with the mental devastation that Sylvia must have gone through, stuck at home with two small children, suffering with writers block, being uninspired by her domestic confinement, whilst her husband was out bedding woman left right and centre, and all the time Sylvia's mental state becoming more and more unstable, and erratic. Both characters were flawed and complex, but I took from the portrayal of Hughes that his actions were the destroying force at work and not Plath's depression. Beautifully directed by Christine Jeffs, the direction showed sympathetically but without over sentimentality the decline of a woman hell bent on self destruction throughout her life. I liked the use of symphony music within the film and it seemed totally in keeping with the central theme of poetic work. It is due to the publishing of 'Birthday Letters' by Ted Hughes some thirty years after Sylvia's death, which details the turbulent relationship between Sylvia and Ted, and without this, this film may never have been made.
The films portrayal of events have been disowned by Plath's daughter, Frieda Hughes, calling it a monstrosity against her mothers name. But it answers a lot of questions for me if historically correct. I didn't like the poetry of Sylvia Plath at all, until I took an English Literature course and her work was a module. I was completely taken with her poem 'Cinderella', and thus began my fascination with this poet. I liked the film a lot, it went extremely quickly, but there again I was very interested in it's subject matter. It wasn't a huge box office draw, but Gwyneth Paltrow did receive an award for her portrayal of Sylvia Plath. Personally I would like to have seen Nicole Kidman in this role, after she gave such an amazing performance as Virginia Woolf in 'The Hours'. My one major disappointment with this film is that it didn't delve deep enough into the workings of the mind of one of the 20th century's major poetical literary influences. It barely touched on her poetry, and also the mythological fascination she holds as a woman, with scholars today.
It isn't just about her poetry, it's also her tortured soul, mind and being. Her fascination lies in the 'Whole package' of Sylvia Plath. This aspect should have been explored more, and more emphasis put upon this. What we got from this film, I felt, was a watered down version of the true woman. She had so many layers, so many dark corners, that I felt were not explored. Sylvia Plath was a complex, emotionally crippled, deeply haunted personality, and I would like to have seen this portrayed in a more in depth study of her character. She said of herself "I feel hollow. There is nothing behind the eyes". - I felt the force of the film was not what it should have been taken this should have been such an interesting character study. What 'Sylvia' the film actually was, was more a tale of 'the marriage'. I feel it might have fared better, and been more powerful a film, if it had focused more on Sylvia Plath, the woman, and Poet. Ironically, as with most poets, her true fame and iconic status was afforded her after her death. -
Running Time: 149 minutes BBFC Rating: 15 years and over
Directed by Christine Jeffs Produced by Alison Owen Mary Richards Written by John Brownlow
Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris
Advantages: Good acting, excellent performances. Disadvantages: Expected a little more of Plath's background
...life, marriage and death of Sylvia Plath. I imagine or I suspect that many who have heard of Plath and are thus interested in seeing this film will know of the tragedy and the darkness that this film will ultimately portray.
For those coming to view Sylvia, with no prior knowledge of the poet's life, they will ultimately learn of her later life, marriage and subsequent tragic death.
I am not giving away the plot here, I'm not giving away the ending ... ...all about the journey of a life, the ending is not of no consequence but just inevitable.
The film begins from the time that the American born Plath was at Cambridge where she meets her soon to be husband, Ted Hughes. They are both poets and are drawn to each other and soon married.
The film tells the story of their love affair, their marriage and the life that they led together.
I realise that this doesn't sound like much of a plot, but basically ...
kitty17 14.08.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Sylvia (DVD)
Advantages: I thought Paltrow was surprisingly good Disadvantages: Wasn't so keen on Daniel Craig
Sylvia Plath is a woman who seems to have it all - a talent for poetry, good looks and a fantastic husband in the poet Ted Hughes. Unfortunately, her life has been dogged by severe depression, leading to suicide attempts on more than one occasion. Marriage to Ted helps with the situation for a while; at least until it is clear that his constant philandering do not help matters. After two children, the couple decide that enough is enough and Ted leaves ... ...and, having read some of Sylvia Plath's work, can understand some, at least, of what she must have gone through. I wasn't sure that Gwyneth Paltrow would be able to portray the various layers of Plath's feelings; not that I have any particular doubts about her aptitude as an actress, but rather that it is incredibly difficult to portray someone suffering from depression on screen without making them seem annoying and selfish. I was actually very ...
sunmeilan 03.08.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Sylvia (DVD)
Advantages: Well acted, good approach to the issues, lovely cinematography Disadvantages: Not enough of Plath's poetry in the film
...getting annoyed that we forgot! Sylvia was one such film, but my fiance was so keen to see it that he got me to hire it through our DVD rentals service.
Sylvia is based on the life of poet Sylvia Plath, who happened to be married to Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate and very successful poet. Sylvia meets Ted whilst they are at University in Cambridge, where they are both struggling to become published poets. The pair start a relationship, and soon Ted has ... ...things start going wrong when Sylvia begins to resent Ted's success, and struggles with being a mother and wife. Can Sylvia come out of her depression or will it all become too much?
To be honest, I wasn't expecting the film that I saw in any way, and by the end, I was suitably shocked and feeling a tad depressed when it was all over! I didn't really know anything about either Sylvia or Ted before watching this film, so the story was new to me and ...
mummy2harry 26.08.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Sylvia (DVD)
...and early 1960's American poet Sylvia Plath struck a chord with female society. Her poetry showed a maturity beyond her tender years and elevated her to prominance in what was becoming a male dominated industry.
Her formative years at University in England were not so much noteable for her literary output, as for her coupe in acquiring reknowned poetic genius Ted Hughes as her partner. As their relationship developed and moved on to marriage and ... ...world for his work, whilst Sylvia remained in his shadows. Whilst at the the height of his fame Hughes embarked on a number of affairs, that only added character to his untarnishable name, but heaped misery on an an increasingly fragile and unstable Plath, leading to their eventual seperation.
Whilst under stress Plath produced some of her most inspired work, namely 'The Colossus - a book of poetry' and 'The Bell Jar' - a semi-autobiographical work, ...
REDF 22.04.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Sylvia (DVD)
Advantages: amazing acting and protrayal of her life Disadvantages: some parts of her life were not focussed on
Sylvia is the movie made adaptation of the life and loss of the acclaimed poet Sylvi Plath. Directed by Christine Jeffs the film is a definate step forward from the last attempt at a film of her life, made a few decades ago. Gwenyth Paltrow plays the role of Sylvia, who meets Ted Hughes, another poet, they fall rather quickly into a passionate love, however the main stumbling blocks to their relationship is whether or not they can overcome the cnage ... ...depression, also can Sylvia cope with living in the shadow of her husbands success with poetry. Ted Hughes received more praise for his poetry than Sylvia, whose first released book Collusus received less than favourable reviews. As the marriage disintergrates, especially after the birth of their children, and move to the countyside Sylvia withdraws into herself, her depression peaking, and Ted spends more and more time in the city, to work on his ...
rachieb123 12.08.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Sylvia (DVD)
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Director: Robin Swicord
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Genre: Drama - Romance
Country: USA
Certification: 12+
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Emily Blunt (Prudie Drummond)
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When Sylvia's husband leaves her for a younger woman, she is devastated. In an attempt to distract her from her marital problems, Sylvia's friends, Jocelyn and Bernadette, decide to organise a book club. A book club can hardly be called a book club with only three members, therefore Jocelyn recruits Sylvia's daughter, Allegra, who is in love with a woman she met while skydiving, Prudie, who is an emotionally scarred French ...
Advantages: Superb script and acting, challenging your views, simply fantastic Disadvantages: Some scenes are just speculative
Crory ... Cherie Blair
Sylvia Syms ... Queen Mother
Roger Allam ... Robin Janvrin
Mark Bazeley ... Alastair Campbell
You can purchase the DVD on play.com for £9.99. Written by Peter Morgan and directed by Stephen Frears. The film runs for 103 minutes, and has a certificate of 12A.
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mummy2harry 08.09.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Queen (DVD)
Advantages: great film very sexy Disadvantages: wanting to be able to dance like that
& Sylvia
"Where Are You Tonight?" - Tom Johnston
"In the Still of the Night" - The Five Satins
Where can I get this?
The movie is available on DVD on Amazon used and new from £4.97
The sound track is available on CD for used and new from £4.97
On Stage:
Most recently Dirty Dancing has been turned into a stage musical in London?s West End, I have not yet seen it but my sister has, she has advised me that the acting is not great but he last dance is fabulous. ...
The early years of Sylvia Plath's marriage to fellow poet Ted are plagued by doubts of his infidelity. The question is whether he is unfaithful because of her own lack of inspiration or whether her own state of mind is worsening because of his affairs. It is only after their separation that Sylvia is able to write the poetry that made her famous...
Release details
DVD Region
DVD
Studio(s)
MGM ENTERTAINMENT; CINRAM LOGISTICS
Release date
26/07/2004
No of Discs
1
Catalogue No
10001237
Barcode
5050070022377
Subject
Sylvia Plath
Languages
Main Language
English
Technical information
Special Features
Featurette - 1. Behind-the-Scenes: Including interviews and on-set footage, Original Theatrical Trailer
Sound
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Dubbing Sound
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround English
Professional reviews
Review
"...Paltrow excels..." (Empire, )
"...Daring and inspired..." (James Christopher) (The Times, )
"...Exquisite... very, very moving..." (Uncut, )
DVD Description
Director Christine Jeffs takes the heartbreaking story of writer Sylvia Plath's life and suicide (which has taken on mythological significance in certain literary circles) and renders it in a palette of surprising beauty. The film paints the story in dark greens, reds and the arresting blues of a recurring water motif. Dealing less with the professional lives of Plath and her husband Edward "Ted" Hughes, and delving more deeply into their notoriously tempestuous marriage, SYLVIA takes risks by attempting to portray what both Plath's family and Hughes (until just before his death in 1998) have remained extremely quiet about. John Brownlow's screenplay fingers no villain, painting both Hughes and Plath as flawed and complex. Beginning in England in 1956, the film depicts American poet Sylvia (Gwyneth Paltrow)--who has a history of depression and suicide attempts--attending Cambridge University on a Fulbright Scholarship. While at a party, she meets Ted (Daniel Craig), a dashing student and fellow poet. The chemistry between them is electric, and they become immediately inseparable, their mutual love of verse the glue that holds them together. But Sylvia's success in her art gives way to jealous madness as other women lavish their attentions on Ted. Her subsequent descent into the deepest of depressions leads to her suicide in 1962. In this stirring film, Paltrow hits a high note in her career with her portrayal of Sylvia.
