Syl The life of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes was a complicated relationship. They were both poets. Sylvia was far more brilliant but totally tortured by her own inner demons. Perhaps, she would have been treated today for mental illness with counseling and medication. Sadly, Sylvia's suicide is fact and not fiction. She was still brilliant and promising but tortured by her inner demons of jealousy about her husband. Perhaps she had postpartum depression as well. Gwyneth Paltrow's performance of Sylvia Plath is a solid performance but it's weakened by poor writing. Daniel Craig does very well in playing her husband. I do enjoy seeing Blythe Danner in playing Sylvia's mother. Poetry is perhaps the most difficult of all writing and takes various forms. It's not surprising that Sylvia Plath had done her finest work solo but she was a gentle soul. I enjoyed seeing Sir Michael Gambon as her landlord. Like I wrote, I felt better improved writing could have helped turn this film into an Academy Award nominated performance by Gwyneth Paltrow. Also, the film was shot on location in New Zealand rather than England or America.

ken_bethell 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.

Dave from Ottawa There is a certain type of undergraduate who sees Sylvia Plath as the victim-heroine of a period that lionized talented men but had no place for women of similar gifts, and fortunately this film does not pander to them. Poets rarely receive lavish acclaim or wealth during their lifetimes, and hers was at least equal to her talent and irrespective of her gender. Any reasonably critical reader of her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar can see evidence of serious mental illness, which in Plath's case went largely untreated, and this film chooses to focus more on that aspect of her life than on anti-feminist conspiracy theories. However, the film comes up short of fully showing Plath as the highly complex and contradictory person her contemporaries knew: sexy, seductive yet so harsh and venal in her judgments of men (especially her husband and her father) as to seem man-hating; also manipulative and vain and yet so insecure that she went long periods without writing. She was likely bi-polar and could on occasion be described as downright monstrous, yet the film hollywoodizes Plath into a more conventional 'troubled' melodrama heroine, rather than delving deeper into the brutal reality of the day-to-day life of someone with significant mental illness. This is surprising given that director Christine Jeffs' earlier film on mental illness, Rain, was unstintingly honest. Plath's well known life history is covered in straightforward biopic narrative: her close-distant, love-hate yo-yo relationship with her mother; her famous first suicide attempt and the subsequent year spent in a sanatorium that was the basis for The Bell Jar; her rocky marriage to British poet Ted Hughes that ended because of his infidelity; her prolific period as a celebrated poet and her eventual death by suicide while still young.I should point out that I thought the cinematography and production design were wonderful. The excellent period look is established by bleeding out bright color from every scene while giving it an amber tint like old photographs. The sets were almost hyper-realistic - cluttered, dim and claustrophobic with none of the romanticized shininess that Hollywood often lavishes on period dramas.

Rick Blaine This could have been a made for television movie, but it's a BBC movie, so you know it's going to be better anyway. Gwyneth shines, as does her mum, and everybody is very very good. There's just one issue.Daniel Craig. The next James Bond. You can't understand a word he says. He mumbles. Incoherently. He hasn't any diction at all. You'd almost want to ring him and suggest he take the Demosthenes cure.His diction is so bad that only a single line in the movie comes across as distinct - and even that takes an effort on the part of the viewer. Something remotely reminiscent of the following.'I've been told you're taking pills.'And before and after that you'd swear there was mud in the sound system when he speaks.There's one scene in the movie where Paltrow and then Craig recite poems of their own at breakneck speed. Paltrow is intelligible even if she's hurtling through it so fast you can't really comprehend, but Craig is just a succession of pseudo-vocal grunts and other assorted sounds.Think back to that very first Bond scene where 007 was first introduced. The casino. In London. Where Bond is fleecing Sylvia Trench at the chemin de fer table. And shiver at the prospect that it's not Connery but Craig who delivers the famous line.'I admire your courage, Miss...?''Trench. Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr...?''Mumble. Mumble mumble.''WHO??!??'It's a sad story, and Paltrow doesn't portray her character as morbid and unsympathetic as some wannabe critics would have it, and the dynamic of the relationship between Plath and Hughes comes through with brilliant colouring, but it's a biopic. Some will love it, others hate it - and most will speculate how much more they could have enjoyed it had they understood anything Craig said.All of which is not to say Plath's poetry or poetry in general merits special recognition. The poetry of both Hughes and Plath comes across today as specious and pretentious. But all that can be overlooked with a thespian performance of the class of Gwyneth.