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Sylvia (2003)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:124
Fresh:45
Rotten:79
Average Rating:5.3/10
Consensus: This biopic about Sylvia Plath doesn't rise above the level of highbrow melodrama.
Theatrical Release:Oct 17, 2003 Limited
Box Office: $1,235,406
Synopsis: Academy Award winner Gwyneth Paltrow stars in Sylvia as legendary American author and poet Sylvia Plath, opposite Daniel Craig as British Poet Laureate Edward (Ted) Hughes. Sylvia explores the... Academy Award winner Gwyneth Paltrow stars in Sylvia as legendary American author and poet Sylvia Plath, opposite Daniel Craig as British Poet Laureate Edward (Ted) Hughes. Sylvia explores the source of creative genius, and love in all its passions. Ted and Sylvia were a sensual, volatile, and brilliant married couple who emerged as two of the most influential writers of the 20th century. The film begins in 1956. Sylvia is in England on a Fulbright Scholarship when she meets Ted. The attraction is immediate and mutual. It is a meeting not only of the minds, but of an intense physicality as well. Within four months, they are married. When her studies are completed, Sylvia is offered a teaching post back in America. She accepts, and the couple relocates. A working wife, Sylvia must also tend to her unique voice or risk losing it. The newly published Ted attracts the attention of the literary world, along with the attentions of admiring women. Retuning to England in the late 1959, Sylvia and Ted attempt to renew their commitment, first with the birth of one child and then another. But as the marriage frays anew and Ted's literary stature overshadows her own, Sylvia's creative impulses surge. She funnels her fury and passion into her work, and her writing begins to flow forth in unstoppable bursts. "I really reel like God is speaking through me," she exults. Her destiny -- and Ted's, inextricably intertwined with hers -- is at hand... -- © Focus Features [More]
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris, Blythe Danner
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris, Blythe Danner, Michael Gambon
Director: Christine Jeffs
Director: Christine Jeffs
Screenwriter: John Brownlow
Producer: Alison Owen
Composer: Gabriel Yared
Studio: Focus Features
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Reviews for Sylvia
Both Rain and Sylvia are shaky in the storytelling department, but both take advantage of Jeffs' strong visual sense to make up for flaws in the script.
Odd that a story of two such hot-burning lives as Plath and Hughes could leave us so cold.
The filmmakers' morbid preoccupation with the grim circumstances of Plath's downward spiral throws Sylvia off balance and into the realm of highbrow melodrama.
Offers a wondrously illuminating artistic experience for its ideal audience -- people like me who know a little but not much about the explosive Plath-Hughes fusion of unbridled poetic temperaments in a tauntingly prosaic world.
I have seen many awful author biopics ("Iris" being especially terrible) but I can’t think of one that I have loathed as much as I loathe 'Sylvia'...
Paltrow successfully transmits Plath's mental distress and her desperation to shake off a mounting depression.
So suffocating, so lugubrious is the film that Sylvia didn't need to gas herself to death. Jeffs deprives her of oxygen.
No one expects this to be the feel-good show of the year, but Jeffs' approach is so maudlin that by the end, Plath won't be the only one who's depressed.
Sylvia's emotional moods should swing from red-hot passion to icy rage. Instead, the movie runs the gamut from tepid to lukewarm.
It's a dreary movie about a dreary character, offering little insight into her poetry or the mental illness that ultimately conquered her.
...a surface treatment of the life and -- most frustratingly -- death of American poet and author Sylvia Plath.
... more or less take the Hughes line, evoking, through testy dialogue and alternately claustrophobic and idyllic mise en scene, the continuing challenge, and occasional delirium, of marriage to a brilliant manic-depressive.
While the movie may inspire some viewers to read (or reread) her work, it may lead others to wonder whether to stay for the whole movie, given that the characters aren't particularly likable or interesting and the ending is already known.
Gwyneth Paltrow delivers an affecting, understated performance as the overwrought Plath.
It's a little surprising that Sylvia is so conventional, considering that Plath, whatever you think of her work or her life story, openly defied plenty of the '50s conventions.
May provide additional insights for those with an intimate knowledge of Sylvia Plath's aching poetry. For anyone else, it's a waste of time.
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