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.
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.