One star
Here's a trite reference to "Daddy," one of Sylvia Plath's most famous poems for sure, but the play on words in reference to the movie "Sylvia," works.
You do not do, you do not do, anymore bad movie - in fact, you never did. But it wasn't really your fault, was it? You had no script, and without any semblance of character development, you were doomed to be a pile of pooh-pooh.
New Zealand director Christine Jeff's "Sylvia," suffered at least as much from shoddy screenwriting by John Brownlow as it did from near-impossible subject matter. For the most part, this movie fails in its mission.
The film aims to tell the tale of Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow), widely accepted as the greatest confessional poet of the 20th century and her tumultuous marriage to Britain's later-Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig).
The poets' relationship, which many say led to Plath's 1963 suicide at the age of 30, has been the subject of one of the most heated debates in literature's stormy history. But this film does little to resolve the question of what, exactly, went wrong.
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For starters, the "Sylvia" powers-that-be go far too easy on Hughes who was often highly critical of Plath's work. The womanizing uberpoet refused to discuss details of his life with her until months before his own death in 1998.
Craig manages Hughes' dark, sultry, brooding nature well enough, but the corny dialogue sequences written into the script make the character come off flat. And besides, without prior knowledge, audiences will be left clueless about why the two fell in love in the first place.
Paltrow, who was visibly up for the role with her haunted eyes and Plath-like hairstyles, shows us a woman who was tortured from the start and borderline insane. Background would tell a Plath aficionado that she hated her father, but "Sylvia" makes no mention of this.
Paltrow is convincing, portraying Plath as disturbed, frustrated and paranoid. But many of the scenes where this is most apparent are ruined with overdone string music.
Whatever else may have been behind Plath's desperate worldview doesn't make it to the screen. The movie focuses only on the time period from 1956, when Plath introduced herself to Hughes by biting him on the cheek at a party in Cambridge, to the night of her death. Plath sealed off her kitchen and turned on the gas stove, asphyxiating herself, after feeding the couples' two children buttered bread and milk.
Weak attempts at foreshadowing - Sylvia loves to bake - are sprinkled throughout.
We follow the pair back to America, where they live in close proximity to Plath's mother, Aurelia (Blythe Danner, Paltrow's real-life mother). Sylvia teaches English at her alma mater, Smith College, while Ted chats up co-eds at the University of Massachusetts.
They later move back to dreary Devon, England, where Sylvia unravels completely under the weight of Hughes' cheating and her own mind.
The final insult comes after the separation-then-reconciliation sex scene, when Plath confronts Hughes about his infidelity during a fully nude embrace.
"You don't love her like you love me - leave her," she says.
Ouch.
Notably absent from this film is the actual substance of Plath and Hughes' poems that made the poets movie-worthy. The Hughes estate has a stranglehold on the material and refused to take any part in "Sylvia," according to the British Broadcasting Corp.
In the end, the film violates the No. 1 rule of poetry: "show, don't tell." Despite noble efforts from Paltrow and Craig, we are simply not shown enough of these characters' inner demons, creative genius or love for each other to believe the premise. We are expected just to know the facts of the case, and are told -sometimes - how we ought to fill in the blanks.
Another trite reference, this time to "Ariel:" in the cauldron of mourning, indeed, for those who see "Sylvia."
