Where did it go wrong?

Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.
– Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus

At the premier screening of the new bio-film Sylvia, a dramatization of the life of "angry young woman" poet Sylvia Plath starring Gwyneth Paltrow, the film’s distributors have thoughtfully provided the viewing audience a small installation featuring the photos of the actors and the production. Nestled among these is one sepia photograph, featuring the images of the real Plath and her husband, the late British poet laureate Ted Hughes. It’s a fascinating photo, capturing both subjects in three-quarters profile at the apex of their beauty, with Hughes looking very much like the young Errol Flynn, and Plath projecting her patrician Massachusetts ancestry even through the static medium.

It is, sadly, the clearest image of Plath and Hughes one comes out with in Sylvia, a turgid melodrama that seeks to cast two of poetry’s brightest mid-century lights as the literary version of Kristine Hermosa and Jericho Rosales. Produced by the BBC, directed by New Zealander Christine Jeffs, whose sole directing credit prior to this is an obscure film called Rain, and written by John Brownlow, Sylvia tries hard, and the effort shows. There’s the beautifully-photographed locations, including Oxford University, and the impeccable support cast that includes Paltrow’s mother, Blythe Danner, Jared Harris, and Albus Dumbledore himself, Michael Gambon.

Sadly, the straining seems to be in vain, as the story itself concentrates on Plath’s and Hughes’ domestic squabbles and Plath’s pursuit of a cryptic death wish that emerged when her father, a famed biologist, died when she was very young. It is a death wish the film fails to unravel satisfactorily.

Most distressingly, there is no wit to the production, a pity when such titans of imagination are your subjects. While it is pointless to second-guess the director’s choices for the film, one does feel like it would have been better had it concentrated more on the internal life of Sylvia Plath, and used her rabid prose as the springboard for the visuals. Throughout the film, the viewer is placed, as if in a hostage situation, right in the middle of endless scenes of arguments between Gwyneth Paltrow, as Sylvia Plath, and newcomer Daniel Craig, as Ted Hughes. Sandwiched in between are scenes of Paltrow looking distressed. Shuffle them all together and that, my friends, is the movie. And the most it can manage by way of levity is to give Plath a compulsive baking habit whenever she’s nervous. Sadly, the detail disappears 10 minutes after it is introduced, and we return to the tedium that is this film’s Ted and Sylvia.

Erstwhile Hollywood Golden Girl Paltrow does what she can with such a fuzzily-written part. Whereas the story of Plath would seem like an obvious choice for her, after defining "luminous and literate" in her Oscar-winning role in Shakespeare in Love, the part fails her in a way that she probably never foresaw: The fact remains that Plath’s life, in straight bio-film standards, is repetitive and boring. As such, Paltrow, after a promising beginning, is reduced to exactly two moods: screeching, harpy and depressed housewife. It is not a pretty sight. And speaking of sights, Paltrow is also appallingly photographed in several scenes. One wonders if it’s just a trick of the light, or did the years actually make "the new Grace Kelly" resemble a collie?

Co-star Daniel Craig, as the hapless Ted Hughes, also tries hard, and almost succeeds, despite spending half his time as the catch-basin for Paltrow’s spittle. Shining in prior supporting roles in such films as Road to Perdition, Tomb Raider and Hotel Splendide, Craig manages a complex performance in one of his first major leads, and wonderfully telegraphs the truly troubling moment when he decides dealing with Sylvia is a bit too much for one man to handle. What the production gets wrong, and this is none of Craig’s fault, is that Hughes himself was a silkily handsome, urbane fellow, with a marked resemblance to Errol Flynn. Craig does not only look different from Flynn. The actor also bears a slight Cro-Magnon quality. As such, the masses of female swooning that accompanies his poetry lectures — the seed of Plath’s seething jealousy, says the film — is barely credible. The precise, sweeping poetry Craig utters does not seem like it came from a man who looks like he hunts with stone implements.

In all, Sylvia remains a honorable failure. The filmmakers tried hard, as did the cast, but the finished piece remains a static domestic drama. Would that they had taken Robert Frost’s advice, and taken "the road less traveled."