Film: Second-rate Sylvia

Frieda Hughes, daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, has written a poem in protest of the release of Sylvia. "Now they want to make a film," she writes, "For anyone lacking the ability/ To imagine the body, head in oven/ Orphaning children." Her concern is well founded. Despite the film's attempt to appear subdued and merely melancholy, it ultimately feels invasive and even exploitative. '

This is a shame. Sylvia is a beautiful film, full of haunting, meditative shots of Gwyneth Paltrow's brooding face set against the constant clouds of London, Boston and Devon, England. Paltrow and Daniel Craig are convincing as the doomed Sylvia and Ted; and Blythe Danner, Paltrow's mother, is spot-on as Sylvia's overbearing mother Aurelia. Disturbingly, the film is peppered with scenes relating to the fatal oven. Paltrow is often shot in the kitchen near the deadly thing, and in one scene her neighbor tells her to "leave the oven on to keep warm." It might be forgivable as foreshadowing, except that we all know how this story ends before the first scene begins.

This is why Sylvia is infuriating. Like Gus Van Sant's recent release, Elephant, it pretends to offer us the facts about a tragedy that we can never truly understand, and forces us to spend the entire movie waiting to be horrified by the disaster we know is coming. Despite the lovely cinematography and the talented acting, the fact is that this movie should not, in good conscience, have been made. Those wishing to beter understand Sylvia Plath could easily pick up her poetry, her semi-autobiographical novel or the book of letters published by her late husband documenting their relationship. They may be even more depressing than this movie, but all are guaranteed to be free of blatant Oscar bids.