A mosaic of depression, obsession and passion, Sylvia is like one big Plath poem slapped on film. But after watching 100 minutes of over-dramatization, you realize that if Pllath had made films, they would have been both ineffective and boring. Her life drama is something best spun on the page, and that's where this movie should have stayed.
Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow) comes across as a heartbroken housewife, a one-dimensional pathetic nutcase, despite Paltrow's mastery of her character. Although the movie attempts to depict a journey into the mind of the poet, it ends up focusing on her life with poet Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig), for the sake of making a glossier story that seeks to be more palatable and Hollywood-worthy. And even when director Christine Jeffs cared enough to try and portray some of the grittier details of her life, they are lost unless you take your English professor along as a date.
Beginning in a rosy glow of love scenes and university life, Jeffs gives a nice look into the manic beauty of Plath's first days with Hughes. Unfortunately, Craig's portrayal is boring and stale, which makes sense, because Hughes is depicted as a blue-eyed, brooding, bed-thumper for the entirety of the film. We see Hughes cheating with other women, abusing Plath, and generally being a big fat jerk, in some kind of foil character role for Plath. And then we cut to scenes of Plath dejected and crying, broken with pain. But Plath did not commit suicide at the age of 34 just because she was an abused housewife. After three suicide attempts, and a lifetime of mental trauma, it is both inaccurate and unjust to put the late poet's mental deterioration solely in the context of her relationship with Hughes.
While the screenplay frames her within her marriage, Paltrow's performance thankfully gives the poet's character some dimension. A mix of jealousy and obsession, influenced by an overriding mental imbalance of Bipolar disorder, Plath's imbalance is a challenge for any actor, but Paltrow manages to pick up all of the pieces. She gives shine to her manic phases and a moving sorrow to her depression, making the most of a script that depicts her as simply a gloomy artist. Paltrow's acting is done with the precise simplicity, that, when combined with Jeffs' attention to detail, gives an inroad to understanding the depth of her personality.
Exciting as this sounds, it gets pretty boring.
Plath cracks eggs, glances at trash bins with disgust and shakes drops of her baby's milk on her inner wrist. Such were the everyday realities of a housewife, acts that may have spurred Plath's frustration. Is any of this even remotely interesting as fodder for a movie? Maybe if you went to the movie with a copy of The Bell Jar in hand.
The film is confusingly shallow without a good high school English class introduction into Plath's life. We are, for example, given mention of Plath's first suicide attempt, but only passing mention of her stay at Bellevue hospital and her subsequent year of electric shock therapy. Without even a pseudo-intellectual knowledge of Plath's life, some of the more beautiful details of the movie are lost.
The interplay of Plath's fiction and life is what makes her story truly interesting. Plath walked a line between fiction and reality, between life and death, something that is almost impossible to convey without a lecture before the film. No matter how fine the direction of Jeffs and Paltrow's acting, the complexity of the Sylvia Plath is a story that may be impossible to put into film form. Plath had already told her story in poems, we don't need a million dollar budget to put it on the screen.
