Movie Review: Sylvia

I've recently gotten obsessed with adding bio-pics and documentaries to my queue on Netflix. Tonight I watched the first of many on the list, Sylvia, starring Gwyneth Paltrow.


This movie chronicles part of the life of the poet, Sylvia Plath, and her turbulent love affair with fellow poet Ted Hughes. I thought it was not bad. Good movie, and especially great performances from Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig.

My biggest problem with this movie was I thought it should have shown much more of her early life to give a true depiction of her life. Unfortunately, they start the story at the very moment she falls in love with Hughes and from then on it looks like everything she does has to do with him. It seemed that Hugh was the only influence over Plath's poetry and writing when in reality there was much more to it. Also, they made her out to be both needy and insecure. It may have been better if they had also shown how strong and sassy Plath was. How playful she was about suicide and not necessarily always so desperate and distraught.

I wanted there to be more of her poetry, too. They quoted other poets almost as much as they quoted her. I was also disappointed not to see Anne Sexton as a character in the film, but that was just a personal hope. I guess I'd need a documentary to get all the little tidbits I was hoping for. Haha!

I know I sound really critical, but I really did enjoy the movie. It's hard to reduce someone's entire legacy to a 2 hour film, and this movie did just fine. One thing especially that I was impressed by was how close the main actors looked like the actual people. They did a great job casting!

Overall, I really liked this movie. I thought that some of it wasn't completely accurate, but it made for a great movie. Gwyneth Paltrow was wonderful and so was Daniel Craig.