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I feared that "Sylvia" would be (in Plath's terms) a potboiler. It showed signs at the beginning that it was going to be the story of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes in the style of "the Bold and the Beautiful". In the first scene Sylvia is a blonde with a curled pageboy. Her mother's house looks like a mansion, complete with a library and uniformed waiters arranging flowers on buffet tables.
But the film didn't continue in that style, which is a bit of a shame, since if it had it would have been highly entertaining. The beach scenes were stunningly shot and they showed effectively the beginnings of Sylvia's difficulties in finding a voice as a writer. Unfortunately the script jumps immediately from Sylvia baking cakes because she is blocked creatively to suspecting her husband is jumping her students.
The Hughes/Plath controversy is fueled by biographies which are sympathetic to either party, portraying Plath as a bunny boiler who accuses Hughes of humping around until he leaves, or Plath as a victim of a marauder who suppresses her poetry and mentally tortures her, especially by bedding every admirer who throws herself at him. The script of "Sylvia" appears to be written by someone who is in the "poor Ted, what he had to put up with" camp, but I'm not entirely certain. Hughes in the early British scenes is brilliant at reciting poetry and delighting Sylvia by suggesting that cows prefer Chaucer over Milton. Once the couple are in the States Hughes' personality empties to riling her mother's friends and leaving Sylvia on her own for hours, presumed humping around. After they move to England, Hughes becomes hollow. He's a cardboard figure who people like the critic at the party envy and women supposedly go gaga over but we never see this. Is the audience meant to believe it was all in Plath's mind until she told Hughes to leave? For the most part the film suggests the history described in the many biographies. I don't think that people who are unfamiliar with the biographies would understand that Sylvia in her rages tears up Hughes' notes for his writing projects as well as his books. According to many accounts, she burnt the manuscript of her novel Falcon Yard in a bonfire she started in Devon after Hughes left: the scene in the film shows her burning papers but doesn't indicate what she is burning.
"Sylvia" made me groan by turning the last hour into slush that distorts the events of the end of Plath's life. She met her downstairs neighbor only once, the night before she committed suicide. He was the last person to see her alive. She did ask for stamps and he did open the door again to find her in the hallway. However, the scenes in which she asks for his help in the power cut and later when she breaks down at his door are invention. Plath and Hughes met on occasions after their marriage broke down and she moved to London with the children, but there is no evidence that she asked him if they could get back together. Alvarez described in a memoir that she read her work to him and he gave her feedback about some of her most famous poems. The scene I found most insulting to Plath is the one in which the fictional Sylvia blurts out to the Alvarez character that she is thinking of taking a lover. On Christmas Eve 1962 Plath invited Alvarez to her apartment for a drink and she wore her hair down. Alvarez felt her loneliness; however, any needs she might have had were unspoken. It's true that Alvarez had also tried to commit suicide: but the dialogue in the scene in which his character lectures her about death is largely unconvincing as well as apocryphal.
"Sylvia" is uncertain about which audience it wants to appeal to: the students who are assigned Plath in high school and college, sympathizers with Hughes, the Biography Channel, or audiences who want a four handkerchief love story. Ultimately it doesn't succeed as a portrait of Plath: it glosses over the difficulties she had as a writer and her achievement in writing the Ariel poems. It has only one scene with Sylvia's mother, although the relationship Plath had with her mother was instrumental throughout her life. I doubt that anyone will come away from the film with any idea of Hughes' work, his achievements as a poet (he became the British Poet Laureate) , or what happened to him after Plath died (a few years afterward Assia Wevill killed herself and the daughter she had with Hughes). It isn't a melodrama but it skims over Sylvia's struggles with depression. It certainly doesn't help the movie that the script doesn't give more than a sample line of some of Plath's poems. I heard that the producers were legally prevented from using longer excerpts from Plath's work, but they could have featured more poetry than a few quotes from Chaucer and Yeats' "The Sorrow of Love". It doesn't go into enough depth for a love story or for Scenes From a Marriage, Times Literary Supplement style.
"Sylvia" is the airplane movie of Plath's life. It flies over the major events, and I think it would be best enjoyed on a plane when there's no other entertainment on offer. That said, I thought the set and costume design was outstanding aside from the maternal mansion. The student housing of 1950s Britain and the limited budget that Sylvia and Ted had as a married couple are deftly depicted. The details of their apartments and their house in the early 1960s are brilliantly captured, down to the instructions in the red phone booth and the telephone that Sylvia pulls from the wall. It's a pity that the movie doesn't explore the details of Plath's life as tellingly as it does her surroundings, and the cakes she bakes.
score 4/10
clivy 15 January 2006
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1265863/ |
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20-2-2021 12:05:07