Sylvia

This despairing account of the first passionate meeting of writer Sylvia Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow) and poet Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig) in 1956, their nearly immediate marriage and subsequent estrangement, and Plath’s suicide at the age of 31 feels more studious than emotionally connected to its main characters. Plath was a manic depressive who had attempted to overdose on pills three years before hooking up with her hubby. Director Christine Jeffs and screenwriter John Brownlow chronicle her slide back into mental gloom and chaos but do not get their arms firmly around the issues of jealousy, infidelity, exhaustion and parenthood, and the creative pressures and processes that decayed the couple’s lives from inside out. The film only momentarily captures the power of Plath’s work and the intense, volatile nature of her personal life. Michael Gambon makes a memorable appearance as Sylvia’s downstairs flat neighbor in London.