MovieChat Forums > Sylvia (2003) Discussion > After watching this movie...

After watching this movie...

posted 16 years ago by katalius123-2
7 replies | jump to latest

And then doing large amounts of research on her, it now occurs to me what an oversimplified telling of her life this is. I've read the Colossus, and I've read several poems from Ariel, plus I've watched a documentary about her which includes interviews with her close friends, Alvarez, and Aurelia. After hearing all these accounts of her life and digging into her later poetry, this film doesn't seem to truly capture the highs and lows she hit as a person. Especially the low she was at in the end of her life. Bottom line, it doesn't capture how extreme she was, whether it be extreme love, hate, joy, anger, in this she was portrayed as a kind of pitiable vanilla.

"But even Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues, you can tell by the way she smiles."

[–] Lilsybee 16 years ago

i thought that too.. if you read her work you know how extreme her emotions are.. it must have been difficult to make this film though without the family wanting it to be made. It's a shame cos i do want to know what Sylvia was like and i imagine her as a modern thinkings, smart women in her good days and then crazy and dramatic when she was unhappy.. i just didn't feel this film was accurate.

I got the better end of the deal. I lent you my body, you lent me your dream

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] vicksykate 16 years ago

Ditto to every point! I thought it was very simplistic and didn't really have much substance to it. I didn't believe Gwyneth Palthrow at all. I mean, it wasn't an awful film... it could have been much better though. I loved Craig's Ted Hughes, however, and I did enjoy some parts of the film.

FreedomBeautyTruthLove

[–] Adler-99 16 years ago

Trying to cram seven years of life into a 2-hour movie is rarely successful. I've been a fan of Plath's work for decades.

[–] lovefool84 15 years ago

One thing I hated was that didn't go into to detail on Plath's past suicide attempts. They made it seem like she met Hughes, he left her, she went nuts, and then committed suicide. I think they could have given some time to flash back or show some of her past attempts and hospitalizations. Her life wasn't so black and white.

[–] blackbirrd 15 years ago

yeah, it's defnitely oversmpified. i liked patrow's performance; but also felt it would have been nicer if they didn't make it seem as if she was some sort of 'weak/ feable' woman falling and ruining her life for hughes.
i also thnk they didn't do justice in portraying hughes. he was a much more of an *beep* than they made him to be. leaving the viewers with the deepened impression of how weak she really was and indeed how she almost 'conjured' the women hughes cheated on her with.

[–] fanaticita 10 years ago

There is something that people seem to have overlooked in analyzing the film and Sylvia's life, and that is the death of her father. Apparently they were very close and his death when she was a child was a major trauma for her. Possibly she suffered from PTSD and was never treated. Anyway, the father's death left a lasting mark of Sylvia, and whenever she detected a hint of betrayal from anyone it turned back the clock to her father's death and her loss, to which she reacted in a very disturbed way. Betrayal to her equaled death.