Sylvia

Sylvia (2003) turned out to be a great movie for me to watch when my husband was out of town. He seemed to have a sense of that and had encouraged me to watch it while he was gone. While I don't think he would have minded it, this isn't a must-see in my book. It has its good points and the acting is very good across the board, but it's just not making the list.

Gwenyth Paltrow is great as Plath. In fact, there is no one in this cast who I doubt for a moment. I don't think that the script or direction fail so much as the topic just could not be contained in this particular vessel. The movie focuses mostly on Plath's marriage to Ted Hughes (played by Daniel Craig), but even then, I think I may have known more about that from hearsay than I got from the film. I remember when Hughes's last book, Birthday Letters, came out, there was a resurgence of grumbling about his treatment of Plath and whatnot. If anything, this film was more sympathetic to Hughes than Plath's fans generally are. Regardless of what may be seen as the film's shortfalls, however, it was lovely if a bit on the dark side. (And I mean this literally, not metaphoricallly; the cinematographer went for dark on dark here.) But Paltrow is very impressive, showing again that she is really a substantial talent and can tackle a very meaty role and that she can totally pull off everything from a twin set to a fisherman's sweater and braids. Right on.