Don't listen to the negative reviews

Boring

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Once Ted Hughes died in 1998, it became open season to speculate as to what had happened in his short stormy tempestuous marriage with Sylvia Plath. Some people blame Hughes for Plath's suicide in 1963.The film begins when American Sylvia Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow) a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University where she meets acclaimed and passionate Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig) a man who lives for poetry.They quickly get married and initially move to the USA. Plath finds it difficult to write and Ted feels uncomfortable in America. They return to Britain, but Sylvia struggles with Ted's infidelity, his success as a writer while she raises two young children.However in time Sylvia starts to develop her own style of poetry which is based on her personal moods and state of mind.Craig gives a passionate performance as Hughes, he comes across as fiery, talented and a ladies man. Paltrow has a more difficult role as the vulnerable and neurotic Plath but she does well with what felt was an underwritten role. The film makes it clear that Plath had bouts of depression and even attempted suicide before she met Hughes.Sylvia cannot get a handle on the complexities of the characters that it is dealing with. In the end it treads a middle line neither blaming Hughes for Plath's death or absolving of any responsibility. The film does feel flat and undernourished. It was not helped that the Plath estate would not grant permission for the use of her writings in the movie.

i like Gwyneth Paltrow she is a good actress i checked this film out because of her but sadly it failed to keep me hooked.this was based on a real life story of poet Sylvia Plath now i don't want to go in details about how accurate this film was but i will talk about what was good and bad about this film adaptation of a real life person.i will not reveal the plot here but i will say it is a depressing film and most of the characters are sad specially Sylvia portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow she did her best here giving all the emotions with her acting methods she cries a lot here all the pain shes was going through you can feel it.the film and the story were both good but the biggest minus point was the acting of Daniel Craig this guy is the king of overacting i swear the whole film he was shouting and going berserk and ruined the film experience for me.i liked the way this film was shot the cinematography was amazing if only the script and cast were better this film could have been better it had potential.this film explores Sylvia's life it is a biographical but a lot of moments are over the top here it is more of a sad love story then a Biographical film then all the unnecessary sex scenes comes,the film runs good for half an hour then tries too hard to fall into a boring, sad erotic movie and fails to connect with the audience.i hated this film specially Daniel Craig this is the same guy who also murdered the James bond films he is not a good actor at all Gwyneth Paltrow is the only good thing about this film and she looks quite stunning and beautiful here even when smoking cigarettes.Overall Sylvia 2003 is a waste of time and money my rating is 3/10.Skipp It

This biography of the relationship between poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes is beautifully played out in this film. If anyone knows anything about either of them, they would certainly be able to see the uncanny reality of the actors portraying them. I thought Gwyneth Paltrow portrayed the depressed Plath in the truest form. I found the part of Ted Hughes, played superbly by Daniel Craig, rather fascinating. Being a ladies man, he was never faithful, not even to his lover, Assia Gutmann who also committed suicide by gas oven, taking the life of her four year old daughter in the process. Though we do not see Assia and Ted's relationship fall apart, we do see how it developed. The movie is entirely about the tumultuous relationship between Hughes and Plath and how her insecurities, which are made to appear psychotic, are actually true. Her sense of Ted's cheating comes to fruition and it kills her, literally. If you like biographical films, this one is a winner. On another note, the son of Sylvia and Ted also committed suicide March 3, 2009. It seems Mr. Hughes, had survived the tragedies surrounding him until his own death by cancer in 1998.

This biopic suffers a fatal omission: poetry. That's a problem, given that the two main characters are Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, two of the more celebrated poets of their time, and doubtless the lack of their work in the movie stems from the hostility of their respective literary estates to the making of this film. Which begs the question: then why make the film?If the filmmakers believed that the natural drama of the situation was enough to cover the lack, then they seem to have erred. Without their verse -- which other characters helpfully inform us is really really good -- we are left with two rather problematic subjects. Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow, giving an extraordinarily fine portrait of fragility and mental illness) comes off as a clinical case rather than a character -- we gather that she wrote some powerful poems and something else called "The Bell Jar," which sounds nice for her, but all we get to see is a troubled young woman who, without treatment, clearly would have been bent on self-destruction no matter whom she married or what line of work she took up. This is deeply sad but not inherently dramatic. (Here we have the difference between "that which is tragic" and "a tragedy.")Hughes (Daniel Craig) suffers even worse by the loss. Since we have no insight into his soul, artwise, and no context with which to evaluate or respect his abilities, he comes off as a plot device rather than a person. (The only poem he reads is by Yeats.) Craig has a hooded gunmetal stare, a rumbling voice and the physique of an action star, and his casting here as a future laureate holds interest: a poet with the physical presence of a prizefighter. (Although has any real poet/children's' book author ever really been that buff?) But the script lets him drift, and all he can do is stride around looking worried and vaguely guilty. Ultimately the only thing we really have to go on is that Hughes seems to have done well with the ladies. As insight goes, that's not much.The movie is well-shot, and occasionally moving, but more often than not its only virtue is to provide an incentive to seek out these writers' frustrating missing words for ourselves. Perhaps then we can see what all the fuss was about.