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Sylvia
Focus Features


4.8

based on 40 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 12 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for sexuality/nudity and language

Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Blythe Danner, Lucy Davenport, Michael Gambon, Jared Harris, Eliza Wade, and Amira Casar

Paltrow stars as legendary American author and poet Sylvia Plath, opposite Craig as British Poet Laureate Edward (Ted) Hughes. The film explores the source of creative genius, and love in all its passion. (Focus Features)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Romance
WRITTEN BY:	John Brownlow
DIRECTED BY:	Christine Jeffs
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: Video: February 10, 2004 Theatrical: October 17, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	100 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

This is the richest role Paltrow has had since ''Shakespeare in Love,'' and she rises to the challenge. She digs deep into Plath's mercurial nature, giving us a Sylvia who's fiercely independent and alive yet burdened with demons of insecurity that bubble up in a rage.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Christine Jeffs has directed it with discretion and intimacy, almost a paradoxical privacy.

Empire June Howdel

Though the sketchy narrative could do with a bit of filling out, and the settings could be less gloomy, this is a memorable interpretation that benefits enormously from sound casting decisions.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Christine Jeffs's film is an emotionally rich biography of the poet Sylvia Plath, who is played with radiant conviction by Gwyneth Paltrow.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

As a film it's mostly top-notch work. Kiwi director Christine Jeffs has taken the poignant, thoughtful screenplay of erstwhile documentarian John Brownlow and rendered it a moving mood-piece of subtlety and ever-encroaching sorrow.

LA Weekly Ron Stringer

The excellent cast is headed by Gwyneth Paltrow in the mood-shifting title role and Daniel Craig as the helpless, not-so-happily philandering Hughes.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Paltrow's performance in Sylvia doesn't have Oscar- worthy depth, but it's a solid, sincere portrayal that captures enough sides of Plath's complex personality to enrich the movie, directed with impressive visual power by New Zealand filmmaker Christine Jeffs.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

For those who have read the poets and are curious about their lives, Sylvia provides illustrations for the biographies we carry in our minds.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Sylvia the movie competently shows us how; but, as always, it's Sylvia the writer who brilliantly tells us why -- then, now and tomorrow, her foreboding words are her finest legacy.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

At heart, Sylvia is constructed as a psychological suspense film framed around the ambiguities of Hughes's infidelity and Plath's resulting paranoia. So at its strangest, the movie is a potboiler.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

What Jeffs -- and Paltrow -- do capture is the shroud of tragedy that hovered over Plath.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Despite an exceptional performance by Paltrow, whose Plath is a layer cake of infinite intelligence and bottomless need, Jeffs' film is an icy affair lacking the fever of Plath's and Hughes' poems.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Paltrow does this role exceptionally well, but it is underwritten.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Doesn't shed much light on the fragile and enigmatic writer whose myth has nearly obscured the real woman.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Sylvia underwhelms.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

You can also see Sylvia without realizing she could be witty and bemused, qualities apparent in her posthumously published novel, "The Bell Jar." This book, which spoke to sensitive girls of the 1960s like few others, is mentioned once in passing in the film. We never see her writing it or learn what it means to her.

Slate David Edelstein

Frustratingly anemic, the filmmakers hiding behind their good taste and sensitivity. They might as well have gone for broke, since Plath and Hughes' daughter accused them of monstrous exploitation anyway.

TV Guide Ken Fox

While there's plenty of Shakespeare, Lawrence and Yeats scattered throughout John Brownlow's screenplay, there's precious little Plath -- no doubt the unfortunate result of the stranglehold the Hughes estate still maintains over her work.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Aside from Paltrow's performance, Sylvia is neither a film so spectacular it shouldn't be missed nor something so tepid you have to stay away.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

A not-very-good movie about a fascinating and underexplored subject: the unknowability of a marriage.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

A handsome, mostly tasteful production on par with 2001's Bayley-Murdoch impersonation "Iris."

Variety Todd McCarthy

Still, there is an estimable integrity to the respect and fidelity with which the film regards its subjects, as well as an honesty in its attempt to illuminate the essences of these difficult people.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Having dreaded the prospect of Sylvia, I admired it precisely because it refuses to play along with the mythologizing that has sprung up, and vulgarized, the lives of two poets. [20 October 2003, p. 206]

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

In spite of Frieda Hughes' objections, a few snippets of Plath's poetry slip into Sylvia, but they don't do the movie any favors--they just add more weight to a story that already buckles at the knees.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The movie doesn't shed much light on their famously contentious marriage. Instead, it spreads gloom all around.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Paltrow looks glam even in death, which only supports the notion, raised by Plath’s daughter Frieda Hughes, that the movie would be about a "Sylvia Suicide Doll." Good call.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The problem with Christine Jeffs’s Sylvia, as with most movies about deeply troubled artists, is that for the most part we are seeing the troubles and not the artist.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

This frigid and inaccessible period piece wears its glumness like a shroud.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

It's a dreary movie about a dreary character, offering little insight into her poetry or the mental illness that ultimately conquered her.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Compare Sylvia to another, more powerful film about a tragic literary death: "Iris," about Iris Murdoch's descent into Alzheimer's, leaves you with an aching heart and reddened eyes. After the equally sorrowful Sylvia, we are entertained but unmoved.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It's a coy, cautious film about a frank, fearless writer.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Broadly speaking, the popular literary biopic is a hopeless subgenre, but this account of the relationship between Sylvia Plath and husband and fellow poet Ted Hughes manages to test the rule thanks to its unusual seriousness and first-rate performances.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The film, bleeding its central character of all shades but black and darkest gray, fails as both biographical chronicle and filmed narrative.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Sylvia also makes it seem as though, even at her happiest, she never received much pleasure from life. This makes for a long, slow procession to the oven door -– so dark, somber, and lifeless is this well-intentioned biography.

Newsweek David Ansen

The film's claustrophobic, color-coordinated dourness yields little illumination, and as the surging violins accompany our heroine's un-raveling mind, the movie comes queasily close to romanticizing suicide. I knew I was supposed to feel something, but what?

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

This feature glimpse into the Bell Jar is an exercise in drudgery, with nothing particularly insightful or revealing to say about the charter member of the Suicidal Poets Society and the artistic endeavor in which she would make her indelible mark.

Film Threat Phil Hall

A mediocre film that presents the troubled poet Sylvia Plath as a jealous, possessive and irritating woman. It is hard to recall another biopic which is so unflattering to its subject.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Never persuasively dramatize the agony, ecstasy and intricacy of composing poetry. Without that aesthetic component, all you see is that Plath's hunger for life couldn't compete with her death wish.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Sylvia plays it safe, and in doing so it becomes little more than just another domestic melodrama devoid of life and, of all things, poetry.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Seems to avoid any kind of edgy, precedent-making attitude, some point of view that feels charged, divisive and consequently alive.

The average user rating for this movie is 4.8 (out of 10) based on 12 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

[Anonymous] gave it a5:
The look and setting of the film are stellar, but the script is a Lifetime movie.

Chad S. gave it a 5:
The storytelling gets very sloppy just before the release of Plath's first collection of poetry. From a state of writer's block, "Sylvia" makes a leap to the publication of "The Collossus". This book is every bit as important as "Ariel", because it's her first success, so the writing shouldn't have taken place completely off-screen. What really kills "Sylvia" is the lackluster presentation of her poetry. The movie doesn't get inside her head enough. Paltrow gives us a lot of sad Plath, but it's mad Plath who we came to see. Plath's life might've been dominated by obsessing over her philandering husband, but the way it's presented here is repetitive and boring.

Miss alva starr gave it a 0:
this movie is horrible. aside from gwyneth paltrow being totally wrong for the part because of her inability to portray a character with much depth and the fact that she didn't even bother to sport brown contacts, darken her hair, or try the new england accent in order to at least resemble plath in some minor way, this film is grossly inaccurate. anyone who even bothered to do any research couldn't have made such astounding fallacies (i.e. making her mother aurelia plath a rich, mansion dwelling socialite, with servants when, in fact, she was a hardworking typing teacher, barely able to maintain her middle class status, who, by all accounts, did not live in a mansion). i wonder why the filmmakers bothered if they weren't even going to attempt an accurate account of plath and her struggles with life, death, motherhood, marriage, and poetry. instead, they portray her as a bitter wife, jealous of her husband's fame. though plath was, no doubt, bitter and jealous during her life, as her journals demonstrate, she was also so much more than that and this movie fails to capture her depth and intensity.

Kyle F. gave it an 8:
I don't know much about Sylvia Plath, but I do think that Gwynneth Paltrow did a great job of showing the various emotions and reactions to the events in her life. This movie kept my attention for the duration of the movie. The heartache of infidelity was well portrayed. The cruelty and tragedy of it all believable.

Nick B. gave it a 9:
Given the budget, the inability to use any poetry within the script, and the potentially disgustingly sensational roads the film could have taken, I think that Jeffs, Craig, Brownlow, and especially Paltrow do a wonderful job. Their work is excellent, real and moving.

Honest John gave it a 9:
Good movie, folks.

Sylvia Focus Features

Sylvia
Focus Features