The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It's 1956 Cambridge, England. American student Sylvia Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow) is dismissed by the high-minded poetry review. She is taken with fellow student Edward Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig)'s poems. They eventually get married. He has many female fans and she suspects his infidelity. They have two children. She struggles to write under successful Ted's overwhelming shadow. She falls into depression and eventually commits suicide in 1963.It's a downbeat biopic that bothers on old-fashion melodrama. Paltrow is lovely but I figured Plath would be more fragile even before her breakdown. Daniel Craig has the prerequisite charisma. The movie is very flat. It is unable to elevate the material into something more dramatic. This is a long drawn out character study that isn't terribly interesting.

"Sylvia" from 2003 is basically the story of poet Sylvia Plath's relationship with her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, rather than the story of Plath's life, therapy, or evolution as a writer.Someone here put it best -- Plath suffered from depression from the time of her father's death when she was 9 years old, but she also had an almost manic energy which enabled her to churn out her work...and the mania in this film is sadly lacking. Instead, an aura of misery hangs over this movie like a black cloud. I have to admit, knowing something of Plath's life, the black cloud would probably be there anyway; it is difficult to show a writer's creative process on film.The layers of the Plath-Hughes relationship can't really be covered adequately. As portrayed by Daniel Craig, Hughes was a handsome and charismatic man, and he and Plath had an amazing sexual chemistry. Here, Plath is a bundle of neuroses and insecurities and is constantly suspicious when she sees him with a woman. It's not clear that in actuality was true. His infidelity did cause them to separate, but whether or not she drove him to it isn't clear. Living with either one of them couldn't have been easy.Gwyneth Paltrow, for all of this, does a marvelous job as Sylvia, as far as the script will let her. There's nothing of her electroconvulsive therapy, or what she went through under psychoanalysis, or her development under her various teachers, such as Anne Sexton. What you do see is her fragility, her emotions, her depressive state, and her passion. All of the performances are good; Michael Gambon does an excellent job as her concerned neighbor.Plath's daughter was against this film and wrote a poem about it: Now they want to make a film For anyone lacking the ability To imagine the body, head in oven, Orphaning children[...] they think I should give them my mother's words To fill the mouth of their monster, Their Sylvia Suicide Doll

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.

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.