BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No. 15
Dec 15, 2004
by Dulz Cuna
CONTENTS
Website:
Movie
Review:
SYLVIA (Firefly in a Bell Jar)
"Dying
is an art ...
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell."
Scene from Sylvia
Those are the opening words of the movie 'Sylvia', spoken over a tight
close-up on an unblinking eye in a woman's face. She is prone. She might
be dead. She might be anyone -- you can't identify her. But the words are
from "Lady Lazarus," a monologue written by Sylvia Plath. Just
got home the DVD of this movie in one of my lucid moments while
experiencing the dross of this painter's block, it said:
Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakespeare in Love, Sliding Doors), Daniel Craig (The Road to Perdition, Tomb Raider) Director: Christine Jeffs
Starring Academy AwardŽ winner Gwyneth Paltrow, SYLVIA is a story of love, passion, wit and despair between two of the 20th century's most brilliant minds, the American poet Sylvia Plath and the British poet Ted Hughes. From their initial meeting they embarked on a tumultuous affair, igniting an epic and violently powerful love. SYLVIA takes us beyond the myth of a legendary writer, behind the romance, and behind the tragedy, to recreate the most devastating love story of our time. Featuring incredible performances by both Paltrow and Craig ("Road To Perdition"), SYLVIA is directed by New Zealander Christine Jeffs who also helmed the critically acclaimed feature film "Rain".
Well, I thought so. I always had a certain dislike for this Writer Biography Movies (The Hours, Henry and June, Iris, etc), but why do I keep renting or buying 'em? At first I deduce I've got to "resurrect that artist block" syndrome and watch boring movies so SYLVIA would make no difference. It turned out to be a Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin* I mean, as if I was looking at my own dreary artistic life and telling myself: Hey! you're not that bad! Look at her! She's gone cuckoo for all that...and you, you've got what it takes! So much more for transactional analysis.
What I was disturbed about was how the film glorified Suicide and made it look so "Artsy". I love Sylvia Plath's poems and I even keep her novel "The Bell Jar" in all this years and even recite her villanelle: "A Mad Girl's Love Song" to my classes in Humanities I - Literature, the Individual and Society..But I do find her life too pathetic yet golden. Like me, Sylvia suffered some sort of idealism which made her prolific..(No I'm not prolific. I'm idealistic). But yet human life has it's own intrinsic quality...if you get cuckoo, you are a genius...harhar.
Gwyneth Paltrow did justice to her role as Sylvia but her talent in portraying the tragic poet went to waste in such a superficial film (rhapsodizing her college life, lacking chemistry with her co-star Daniel Craig, drab and dark scenes like it was lit up only by a 20-watt bulb). She carried an intellectual strength of the Plath role. I heard she hated the role but studied it well instead, shaping the Sylvia from the sunny, glib and eloquent college girl who falls in love with the British poet Ted Hughes and consequently marries him, to a post-nuptial Sylvia sinking into symptomatic lassitude and depression and gradually towards her suicide. Yep, Gwynnie did her job, but it was the movie that was sooo disastrously Flat.
Daniel Craig was just that. A Daniel Craig...What was the Ted Hughes exuberance that Sylvia fell for in the first place? I expected more character,,,more elan on the Hughes character, but jeepers he was just a Daniel Craig. Was this the man Sylvia, the sensuous poet fell and lost her mind for? Ted Hughes, the British poet laureate of his time? A powerful and successful man? Craig failed to show that in the movie...but no, I won't blame Danny...maybe the screenwriter..the only time I liked Danny as Ted Hughes was in that poetry slamming part in a pub...
However, I do not know the true intentions of the makers of this movie...It could have been just a movie of a talented girl who dries up and goes mad as a housewife struggling in the shadow of a successful man who goes philandering..or better still, in a poet's analogy: a firefly trapped in a bell jar.
--------------------
*Biblical: the mysterious riddle written by a hand on the wall at
Belshazzar's feast. These Aramaic words may be translated literally as,
"It has been counted and counted, weighed and divided." Daniel
interpreted this to mean that the king's deeds had been weighed and found
deficient and that his kingdom would therefore be divided.
Posted 12/14/04. Send
comments to: bananacue_republic@yahoo.com
"...as
if I was looking at my own dreary artistic life and telling myself: Hey!
you're not that bad! Look at her! She's gone cuckoo for all that...and you,
you've got what it takes!"