Sylvia (2003 film)

Last updated

Sylvia
Sylvia movie.jpg
Directed by Christine Jeffs
Written byJohn Brownlow
Produced by Alison Owen
Mary Richards
Starring Gwyneth Paltrow
Daniel Craig
Jared Harris
Michael Gambon
Blythe Danner
CinematographyJohn Toon
Edited by Tariq Anwar
Music by Gabriel Yared
Production
companies
Distributed by Icon Film Distribution (United Kingdom) [2]
Focus Features (United States)
Release dates
  • 17 October 2003 (2003-10-17)(United States)
  • 30 January 2004 (2004-01-30)(United Kingdom)
Running time
110 minutes
CountriesUnited Kingdom
United States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$2.9 million [3]

Sylvia is a 2003 British biographical drama film directed by Christine Jeffs and starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris, and Michael Gambon. It tells a story based on the real-life romance between prominent poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. The film begins with their meeting at Cambridge in 1956 and ends with Sylvia Plath's suicide in 1963.

Contents

Plot

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1932, Plath developed a precocious talent as a writer, publishing her first poem when she was only eight years old. That same year, tragedy introduced itself into her life as Plath was forced to confront the unexpected death of her father. In 1950, she began studying at Smith College on a literary scholarship, and while she was an outstanding student, she also began suffering from bouts of extreme depression. Following her junior year, she attempted suicide for the first time. Plath survived, and, in 1955, she was granted a Fulbright Scholarship to study in England at the University of Cambridge.

The film begins with a shot of Plath sleeping, then opening her eyes. As a student at Cambridge she rides along on her red bicycle and wearing an academic gown. She hears of a party to celebrate the publishing of a magazine called St. Botolph's, where she meets the young poet Ted Hughes. The two fall in love and marry in 1956, then go off to Massachusetts where her mother Aurelia lives. While they are both teaching at Smith College, Sylvia quickly learns that others are also enthralled by her husband, due to his combination of good looks, charisma, fame and success. They return to England, first to London and then to Devon, where Sylvia raises their two children and lives in her husband's professional shadow as she tries to eke out her own writing career, which doesn't come as naturally to her as it does to Ted. After a visit by David and Assia Wevill, who had rented their London flat, Sylvia rightly accuses Ted of infidelity. She kicks him out and then begins to write the poems that would be published posthumously in her collection titled Ariel. Sylvia then moves back to London with her children. Ted visits at Christmas and they make love again but he says he cannot leave Assia, who is pregnant. Shortly thereafter she prepares for her suicide, sealing off the children's room from the gas from her gas oven. A nurse comes to take out the children and Ted sees Plath's manuscript on her desk. A closing title informs us that her book made her much beloved and that Ted wrote his response in 1998 (just before his death), in a collection titled Birthday Letters.

Cast

Production

Frieda Hughes, Sylvia Plath's daughter, objected to the making of the film and denied BBC Films the rights to her mother's poetry. Hughes published a poem in the magazine Tatler , which contained the line, "They think I should give them my mother's words/To fill the mouth of their monster/Their Sylvia Suicide Doll." [4]

Pawel Pawlikowski was originally attached to direct. However, he left due to the lack of artistic control he was given. [5] "I walked away because the script wasn’t good, and it became a Hollywood film, where you didn’t have much control. With my methods of sculpting and changing things, I would have got fired after a week," he said. [6]

Filming took place between October 2002 and February 2003. [7] Much of the film was shot in and around the New Zealand city of Dunedin, with the University of Otago serving to represent Cambridge. [7] [8]

Reception

On review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, Sylvia has a 36% "rotten" approval rating based on 132 critics' reviews. The site's critics consensus reads, "This biopic about Sylvia Plath doesn't rise above the level of highbrow melodrama." [9] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 56 out of 100 based on 40 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [10]

Roger Ebert gave the film three out of a possible four stars, praising Paltrow and Craig's performances. [11] A.O. Scott, writing for The New York Times , also praised Paltrow's portrayal of Plath, but wrote that, "The psychological dynamics of the marriage, unsettled by professional envy and sexual jealousy, are duly noted, but the film's emotions are too big, too untidy and too strange to be contained by its story." [12]

Claudia Puig of USA Today also praised the performances, but said the film falls short of "depicting Plath as an artist. We don't learn what inspired her to pursue writing as an outlet for her emotional turmoil." [13] Puig also commented that the movie "glosses over" what led Plath and Hughes to drift apart from each other. [13] Writing for Slate , Meghan O'Rourke said while the film "purports to be interested in Plath as an artist, it tends to reinforce the old clichés about her work." [14] O'Rourke added it "fails to explore the fact that Plath was one of the first major American poets to be a mother and to take the pleasure of motherhood as her subject." [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blythe Danner</span> American actress (born 1943)

Blythe Katherine Danner is an American actress. Accolades she has received include two Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Izzy Huffstodt on Huff (2004–2006), and a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress for her performance in Butterflies Are Free on Broadway (1969–1972). Danner was twice nominated for the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for portraying Marilyn Truman on Will & Grace, and the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for her roles in We Were the Mulvaneys (2002) and Back When We Were Grownups (2004). For the latter, she also received a Golden Globe Award nomination.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvia Plath</span> American poet and writer (1932–1963)

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), Ariel (1965), and The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honor posthumously.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ted Hughes</span> English poet and childrens writer (1930–1998)

Edward James "Ted" Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gwyneth Paltrow</span> American actress and businesswoman (born 1972)

Gwyneth Kate Paltrow is an American actress and businesswoman. The daughter of filmmaker Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner, she established herself as a leading lady appearing in mainly mid-budget and period films during the 1990s and early 2000s, before transitioning to blockbusters and franchises. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award.

<i>Ariel</i> (poetry collection) Poetry book by Sylvia Plath

Ariel was the second book of Sylvia Plath's poetry to be published. It was first released in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. The poems of Ariel, with their free-flowing images and characteristically menacing psychic landscapes, marked a dramatic turn from Plath's earlier Colossus poems.

<i>View from the Top</i> 2003 film by Bruno Barreto

View from the Top is a 2003 American romantic comedy film directed by Bruno Barreto and starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Christina Applegate, Candice Bergen, Joshua Malina, Mark Ruffalo, Rob Lowe, Mike Myers, and Kelly Preston. The film follows a young woman (Paltrow) from a small town who sets out to fulfill her dream of becoming a flight attendant.

Assia Esther Wevill was a German-Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis at the beginning of World War II and emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, via Italy, then later England, where she had an affair with the English poet Ted Hughes. While she was a successful advertising copywriter and a talented translator of poetry, she is mainly remembered in the context of her relationship with Sylvia Plath and Hughes.

<i>Birthday Letters</i> 1998 poetry collection by Ted Hughes

Birthday Letters is a 1998 poetry collection by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes' death, the collection won multiple prestigious literary awards, including the Whitbread Book of the Year, the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, and the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry in 1999. This collection of eighty-eight poems is widely considered to be Hughes's most explicit response to the suicide of his estranged wife Sylvia Plath in 1963, and to their widely discussed, politicized, and "explosive" marriage. Prior to Birthday Letters, Hughes had only explicitly mentioned Plath once before, in a poem titled 'Heptonstall Cemetery' from his 1979 collection Remains of Elmet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daddy (poem)</span> Poem written by American poet Sylvia Plath

"Daddy" is a poem written by American confessional poet Sylvia Plath. The poem was composed on October 12, 1962, one month after her separation from Ted Hughes and four months before her death. It was published posthumously in Ariel during 1965 alongside many other of her final poems, such as "Tulips” and "Lady Lazarus". It has subsequently become a widely anthologized poem in American literature.

Frieda Rebecca Hughes is an English-Australian poet and painter. She has published seven children's books, four poetry collections and one short story and has had many exhibitions. Hughes is the daughter of Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist and poet Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, who was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1984 until his death in 1998.

Diane Helen Middlebrook was an American biographer, poet, and teacher. She taught feminist studies for many years at Stanford University. She wrote critically acclaimed biographies of poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, and jazz musician Billy Tipton.

"Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea" is a poem written by Sylvia Plath that was first published in 1955, the year she graduated from Smith College summa cum laude. An abstract poem about an absent lover, it uses clear, vivid language to describe seaside scenery, with "a grim insistence" on reality rather than romance and imagination.

"Lady Lazarus" is a poem written by Sylvia Plath, originally included in Ariel, which was published in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. This poem is commonly used as an example of her writing style. It is considered one of Plath's best poems and has been subject to a plethora of literary criticism since its publication. It is commonly interpreted as an expression of Plath's suicidal attempts and thoughts.

Christine Jeffs is a New Zealand-born director, editor, and screenwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Tawton</span> Town in Devon, England

North Tawton is a small town in Devon, England, situated on the river Taw. It is administered by West Devon Council. The population of the electoral ward at the census 2011 was 2,026.

Nicholas Farrar Hughes was a British and American fisheries biologist known as an expert in stream salmonid ecology. Hughes was the son of the American poet Sylvia Plath and English poet Ted Hughes, and the younger brother of artist and poet Frieda Hughes. He and his sister were public figures as small children due to the circumstances of their mother's widely publicized death by suicide.

<i>The Colossus and Other Poems</i> Book by Sylvia Plath

The Colossus and Other Poems is a poetry collection by American poet Sylvia Plath, first published by Heinemann, in 1960. It is the only volume of poetry by Plath that was published before her death in 1963.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Applicant (poem)</span>

"The Applicant" is a poem written by American confessional poet Sylvia Plath on October 11, 1962. It was first published on January 17, 1963 in The London Magazine and was later republished in 1965 in Ariel alongside poems such as "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" two years after her death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chalcot Square</span> Garden square in London, England

Chalcot Square is a garden square in the Primrose Hill district of London, England.

References

  1. 1 2 "Sylvia (2003)". AFI Catalog of Feature Films . Retrieved 30 March 2021.
  2. "Sylvia (2003)". BBFC . Retrieved 30 March 2021.
  3. "Sylvia".
  4. "Frieda Hughes attacks BBC for film on Plath". the Guardian. 3 February 2003. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  5. Brownlow, John (22 August 2003). "Who's afraid of Sylvia Plath?". the Guardian. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  6. Appleyard, Bryan (19 August 2018). "Pawel Pawlikowski interview: the Oscar winner on his new film, Cold War". The Times. Archived from the original on 28 October 2022. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  7. 1 2 "Sylvia Movie Production Notes | 2003 Movie Releases". Made in Atlantis. 20 September 2015. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  8. McNeilly, Hamish (15 September 2016). "Otago cottage in film starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig up for sale". Stuff. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  9. "Sylvia (2003)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 31 October 2019.
  10. "Sylvia". Metacritic. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  11. Ebert, Roger (24 October 2003). "Sylvia Movie Review & Summary". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 4 June 2016.
  12. Scott, A.O. (17 October 2003). "FILM REVIEW; A Poet's Death, A Death's Poetry". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 4 June 2016.
  13. 1 2 Puig, Claudia (16 October 2003). "'Sylvia' dances around darkness". USATODAY.com. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  14. 1 2 O'Rourke, Meghan (28 October 2003). "Who's afraid of Sylvia Plath?". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 28 October 2022.