Sylvia

It's always a tricky one-trying to give a balanced view of a marriage that none of us was part of and in which the only two participants are dead. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the preppy American abroad to a T, and portrays Sylvia's darker and more complex sides with equal aplomb. Daniel Craig gives a charismatic perfromance as Ted, who was famously attractive to women (even if you see pictures of him in his later years, he still had those piercing hawk like eyes).
The film portrays the inequality of the early sixties- for all its liberalism, she was always going to be overshadowed by her husband. Despite her intelligence and strong character, she was still Ted's wife to their contemporaries. It would be easy to judge Sylvia for her temper and irrational jealousy, but it must have been agony to have always been that suspicious, traumatised, and angry. It would also be easy to judge Ted and simply condemn his infidelity, but what I liked about this film is that you judge them both. She was wrong, he was wrong and at the same time they were both right. Pretty much how marriage goes.
Little touches of authenticity throughout the film make it all the more real: the dirty squalor of the kitchen when they both worked at Smith, the typical intellectual competitiveness amongst young students in the scene where they recite Shakespeare faster and faster, and the amount of blankets they have on the bed during the cold Cambridge winter.
Throughout the film, the wintry atmosphere reigns and London, always good looking in films, looks frozen and inaccessible as towards the end, Sylvia's mental state reduces her to the erratic, suicidal woman she became. It's an essay on the tragedy of mental illness, a literary biography, and a tender love story. Definitely worth buying.

As someone who knows nothing about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes I found this film interesting - entertaining in the form of curiosity, voyerism and sympathy.

It's feel is quite similar to Iris, in that it has an Oxbridge dance near the start, has an informal introduction between the two main characters, and shows (her) mental decline over the subsequent 90 minutes. Some find that unsympathetic and tabloidish, some find it dull, some find it depressing, Plath virgins like myself find it subtle and realistic.

The film for me shows both characters as having faults and inspiration. I read that feminists would not accept any criticism of Plath and blame Hughes for her suicide, but surely such a complex woman deserves responsibility for her actions too, though clearly she has a severe mental illness which, through bitter personal experience, takes an iron clasp to one's emotions and subsequent actions.

There is well crafted tension in the piece, particularly in the dinner scene with their frineds in Devon. All conventions for a quiet English cottage life are taken and then stained with the worst emotion possible to any Englisman - embarressment. The music by Gabriel Yared is, as usual, excellent and wonderfully annotates the film with mood and subtext.

Perhaps it's because I'm uncultured in this area that I didn't have a pre-conception of how the film should be. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe hardly any of it is true to life, but in the end it doesn't matter. This is a movie and in my opinion it delivers.

There are many differing opinions on the marriage of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath and ultimately the makers of `Sylvia' are not going to please everybody. However, the film was not weighted to either Plath's or Hughes' point of view, holding them both up as great poets who had a great connection, however positive or detrimental that might have been. The relationship between Plath and her mother is also beautifully explored, as is the relationship between Plath and poetry. This is not just about the marriage of Ted and Sylvia.

The casting is magnificent. Both Paltrow and Craig give superb performances and the supporting cast are equally commendable. The film is beautifully presented all round. I loved the use of the colours red and blue to indicate different moods (as in Hughes' poem `Red'). The attention to detail (drawind from both Plath's and Hughes' poetry) is astounding.

`Sylvia' is ambitious in what it attempts to convey but I'm not sure the entire audience get the point. I only wish there had been more poetry in it. Watch with an open mind and a hankie.

A wonderful film.