Ted, not Sylvia

Sylvia, the movie, sucked. Listen hear, babies, and listen good. The downlow on John Brownlow, the dude responsible for the screenplay, is that he's definitely not a feminist and he was definitely not savy to the life & times of Ms Plath when writing that bullplop.

Plath, as played by Gwyneth Paltrow (whose taste I'm starting to question), is portrayed as a completely pathetic, sad sack of a woman who totally went nuts and offed herself after suspecting, then confirming, her husband's dalliances. Little mention of her history of mental illness, her artistic struggles, the fact that her husband roughed her up and apparently destroyed her journals postmortem so that no one would know the half of it. Woops, just forgot, whatevs.

Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that the story just drops you in her Cambridge years so there is so much neglected subtext. And almost immediately we find Sylvia at a party where she falls all over Ted Hughes after gushing on about how great his poetry is. I don't doubt there was some steamy hot passion there with a dash of sublime appreciation and career envy to boot, but I also don't think Sylvia would be so transparent and uncomplicated. Not that I knew the broad personally, but her writing evokes some depth, so why would her character be so shallow? Touched, she was, but I doubt Plath was petty.

Not to mention that Gwyneth, as Sylvia, is all rosy and refined for the first half of the movie, dressed entirely in pink and pearls, hair smooth and curled, lips glossed, and consequently, as she goes crazy, her hair gets long and fried like a poodle and she starts wearing entirely drab earth tones and looking sallow. The visual metaphor is perhaps a little too obvious.

However, there is some nice use of slow-mo in this film.

Also, I must add that Ted Hughs is played by Daniel Craig. I've been pretty indifferent to Craig, but in a recent conversation, when asked what I think about him I decided that I think he is handsome and a good actor and all that, but there is something so BRUTAL about him. Like, he looks like he would be pretty nastymean IRL.

I vote that Jen May remake Ted, I mean Sylvia. As long as she uses the slow-mo.