**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris, Amira Casar, Blythe Danner, and Michael Gambon
Directed by Christine Jeffs & written by John Brownlow
2003
R 110 min
“Sylvia,” the new biopic of Sylvia Plath, is a fine film in its way, but several questions kept running through my mind: haven’t I seen this movie before? Does it really matter, to the film, whether the characters are poets? In every scene in which someone is reading, writing, or yelling poetry, couldn’t they just as easily be painting, sculpting, or playing the violin? Couldn’t the life of any tortured artist be put through this BBC/art-movie machine, in which the artist’s work is initially ignored, he or she is caught up in a whirlwind romance, there are tragedies and infidelities, and out of them come great works of art, before a tragic death? Plath merely provides the flavor for “Sylvia,” the décor, the period costume, and what people talk about when they need to sound “art-sy.” But the tortured artist could just as easily be Frida, Kafka, or good old Ludwig van.
Then I started to wonder, could a movie like this be made about me? All that would be needed is a loose connection between some misfortune in my life and the beginnings of my website. My wife and I fight, like every married couple, and then I’ll die tragically. At least, my death will sure seem tragic to me, although my wife will probably just seize upon it as an opportunity to get some housework done, especially after all that impassioned, artistic fighting we just did.
We first meet Sylvia (Gwyneth Paltrow) in 1950s Cambridge, on the day that begins her whirlwind romance with poet Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig, who played Paul Newman’s no-good son in “Road to Perdition”). Fame comes to him early on, Sylvia and Ted marry, and they go back to Sylvia’s hometown in New England, where they work as teachers. Struggles with writer’s block, jealousy, and suspected infidelity lead them back to the UK, where their marriage eventually comes apart. Fame is now Sylvia’s, as tragedy has inspired her, but she feels empty inside, as she has always felt empty. Truly, some tortured artists die more tragically than others; suicidal thoughts have haunted Sylvia since her girlhood, in much the same way that Beethoven was going deaf, Kakfa was generally unhealthy, and Frida was just in a bad, bad way. Along the way, we hear excerpts from Sylvia’s work, many of them veiled attacks at a father, a husband, and a life which she feels has let her down, or maybe just failed to keep her interest.
Gwyneth is fine as Sylvia, long-haired and tortured, playing the role internally and keeping her speeches to an absolute minimum. Liverpuddlian actor Daniel Craig makes an interesting, withdrawn intellectual, awkward amidst the old New England families but at ease around the new hipsters of old England. One of his clique’s favorite pastimes is reciting line upon line of Shakespeare at breakneck speed while soused. And you thought people only did that with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Gwyneth’s mother, Blythe Danner, makes a short appearance as Sylvia’s mother, and Michael Gambon, as Sylvia’s downstairs neighbor, gets a big laugh in a serious movie. Cinematographer John Toon casts London’s warm internal spaces in a rich, golden brown, while the country village of Devon is all the color of cold stone, and New England is the white of fresh plastic. The movie’s score by Gabriel Yared, who is Anthony Minghella’s frequent composer, is an adequate yet completely generic collage of strings, oboe, and piano.
To say that “Sylvia” is not well-made would be an out-and-out falsehood. But it reminds me of the average “making-of” documentary you find on most DVDs: competently-assembled, informative, but in no way specific or particular to its subject matter. It’s called “Sylvia,” but it could be about anybody.
Finished October 28, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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