Gweneth Paltrow was kinda amazing in this uneven and sympathetic bio of poet Sylvia Plath, and probably the sole reason I stuck with it.The movie itself is very dark, dry in places and just sad throughout. Spanning many years, for the most part this centres on Plath's turbulent marriage to future poet Ted Hughes (played by Daniel Craig). Their relationship is sensuous, volatile and intriguing to watch in its highs and lows.For some reason all the rooms in every house Plath lived in are painted a thick, glossy dark grey, which I found strange. Strange that I even noticed? Honestly a bit of a struggle to get though but worth it and on a plus Daniel Craig gets naked. 01/13

First of all, I've never read any of Sylvia Plath's poems. Watching Christine Jeffs's "Sylvia", what I interpreted is that the movie wanted to focus more on Plath's depression than on her oeuvre. Plath was stuck in a loveless marriage and her poetry was the only joy that she got. We can debate whether it's better for a biopic to focus more on the subject's work or the subject's life, but I think that it's good to have a frame of reference (in this case, Plath's unfulfilled existence).Gwyneth Paltrow puts on a pretty grim performance as Plath, while Daniel Craig makes Ted Hughes look like a real creep. The movie isn't any kind of masterpiece, but I think that it gives a good sense of how one's existence influences one's work. It's worth seeing for that.

Gwyneth Paltrow is reported to have said that she was extremely unhappy with her performance in this film and cited her father's recent death for her inability to focus. She shouldn't have been so hard on herself as her acting in this film is a tour de force. It is even conceivable that the grief that she was feeling for her father gave her performance that poignancy and edge the part required.When you consider all the frivolous and trivial films that Paltrow has made down the years - including that ridiculous Oscar-winning role - her portrayal of the tragic Plath came as affirmation that she really was more than just eye candy. The film was well balanced and not unduly critical of Ted Hughes, a figure still much-vilified by the feminist lobby as being responsible for Sylvia Plath's mental disintegration and death.Daniel Craig's striking similarity to Hughes adds that extra something to his fine performance. One was left with the impression that if their paths hadn't crossed their lives would not have changed perceptibly.Plath was damaged long before she met Hughes, and Hughes? When was a handsome poet not the subject of scandal? A period gem that probably suffered commercially for acquiring an 'art house' tag, but a must see even if you are not into modern literary characters.

"Sylvia" splices and smudges with the sugary fingers of a binging college girl attempting to finish a presentation overnight. There's a distracted fluster about it, a wasteful, listless quality that seems to flick away its own subjects disinterestedly, like flies. The film appears to have been filmed under the cataract of a glazed cosmological eye by a director ailing with some chronic and/or terminal illness that makes her too exhausted to come to work much, much less care about any work she does manage to get done.Right from the get go, people and situations are veritably hurled at us without recourse, pretense, or explanation. Never are characters allowed to develop and establish a basis for their actions, which in themselves are not even given enough time to become subsequent. Gwyneth Paltrow's shrill Plath & Daniel Craig's listless Hughes have all the chemistry of two plates, and the edgy contempt that permeates their affair from the get go dashes their "marriage of true minds" myth to bitters on the rocks. Never, even in the beginning, do the two display any real tenderness towards each other, and never is the important historical union of their dual artistry illuminated. Thus, not being convinced of their love...nor, more importantly, of Plath's intense vulnerability...we cannot, of necessity, mourn its or her final disintegration. Director Christine Jeffs does not even succeed in making Plath an unlikable character...her Sylvia is too embarrassingly one dimensional to be anything but "flat, ridiculous, a cut paper shadow..." though she devotes a good deal of time to perpetuating the image of the poet that appeared in Anne Stevenson's notoriously biased biography "Bitter Fame".It is very difficult to imagine a movie that downplays with more tactical error the genius and dimensionality of its subject. The film boasts one of the frankly worst screenplays ever penned…much of the dialog is downright tacky, right out of its own Saturday Night Live parody (see the scene where Plath gushes, like a glazed Pollyanna, "I reeeally think God is speaking through me!") Finally, the movie poster for the film is significant in itself. As Sylvia Plath (flanked by the mortifyingly tasteless tagline, "Life Was Too Small Too Contain Her") Gwyneth Paltrow's eyes are so blue they seem almost colorized...stunning; the focus of the picture. Plath's brown eyes have been alluded to in memoirs, in Hughes' poems, and her own journals, and can be seen in photographs of her. A petty detail, so say some...but it's not. By not even bothering to outfit the star of the show with a friggin pair of color contacts, Jeffs is telling us that her film is going to be as she likes it; that attention to the life and death of a very real, very public figure is only incidental...and secondary...to artistic license. The problem is, this isn't true; and so we can only shake our heads and mutter, like Voltaire, "one owes respect to the living; to the dead only truth."