Sylvia
Focus Features | Release Date: October 17, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
21
Negative:
3
Watch Now
Buy on

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
This is the richest role Paltrow has had since ''Shakespeare in Love,'' and she rises to the challenge. She digs deep into Plath's mercurial nature, giving us a Sylvia who's fiercely independent and alive yet burdened with demons of insecurity that bubble up in a rage. Read full review
90
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
Christine Jeffs has directed it with discretion and intimacy, almost a paradoxical privacy. Read full review
80
L.A. WeeklyRon Stringer
The excellent cast is headed by Gwyneth Paltrow in the mood-shifting title role and Daniel Craig as the helpless, not-so-happily philandering Hughes. Read full review
80
EmpireJune Howdel
Though the sketchy narrative could do with a bit of filling out, and the settings could be less gloomy, this is a memorable interpretation that benefits enormously from sound casting decisions. Read full review
80
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Christine Jeffs's film is an emotionally rich biography of the poet Sylvia Plath, who is played with radiant conviction by Gwyneth Paltrow. Read full review
80
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
As a film it's mostly top-notch work. Kiwi director Christine Jeffs has taken the poignant, thoughtful screenplay of erstwhile documentarian John Brownlow and rendered it a moving mood-piece of subtlety and ever-encroaching sorrow. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
For those who have read the poets and are curious about their lives, Sylvia provides illustrations for the biographies we carry in our minds. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Sylvia the movie competently shows us how; but, as always, it's Sylvia the writer who brilliantly tells us why -- then, now and tomorrow, her foreboding words are her finest legacy. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
At heart, Sylvia is constructed as a psychological suspense film framed around the ambiguities of Hughes's infidelity and Plath's resulting paranoia. So at its strangest, the movie is a potboiler. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Paltrow's performance in Sylvia doesn't have Oscar- worthy depth, but it's a solid, sincere portrayal that captures enough sides of Plath's complex personality to enrich the movie, directed with impressive visual power by New Zealand filmmaker Christine Jeffs. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerPaula Nechak
What Jeffs -- and Paltrow -- do capture is the shroud of tragedy that hovered over Plath. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Despite an exceptional performance by Paltrow, whose Plath is a layer cake of infinite intelligence and bottomless need, Jeffs' film is an icy affair lacking the fever of Plath's and Hughes' poems. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
You can also see Sylvia without realizing she could be witty and bemused, qualities apparent in her posthumously published novel, "The Bell Jar." This book, which spoke to sensitive girls of the 1960s like few others, is mentioned once in passing in the film. We never see her writing it or learn what it means to her. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Doesn't shed much light on the fragile and enigmatic writer whose myth has nearly obscured the real woman. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Paltrow does this role exceptionally well, but it is underwritten. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Sylvia underwhelms. Read full review
60
SlateDavid Edelstein
Frustratingly anemic, the filmmakers hiding behind their good taste and sensitivity. They might as well have gone for broke, since Plath and Hughes' daughter accused them of monstrous exploitation anyway. Read full review
60
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Still, there is an estimable integrity to the respect and fidelity with which the film regards its subjects, as well as an honesty in its attempt to illuminate the essences of these difficult people. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
Having dreaded the prospect of Sylvia, I admired it precisely because it refuses to play along with the mythologizing that has sprung up, and vulgarized, the lives of two poets. [20 October 2003, p. 206]
60
Village VoiceJessica Winter
A handsome, mostly tasteful production on par with 2001's Bayley-Murdoch impersonation "Iris." Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Aside from Paltrow's performance, Sylvia is neither a film so spectacular it shouldn't be missed nor something so tepid you have to stay away. Read full review
60
SalonStephanie Zacharek
A not-very-good movie about a fascinating and underexplored subject: the unknowability of a marriage. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
While there's plenty of Shakespeare, Lawrence and Yeats scattered throughout John Brownlow's screenplay, there's precious little Plath -- no doubt the unfortunate result of the stranglehold the Hughes estate still maintains over her work. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMark Caro
It's a dreary movie about a dreary character, offering little insight into her poetry or the mental illness that ultimately conquered her. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Broadly speaking, the popular literary biopic is a hopeless subgenre, but this account of the relationship between Sylvia Plath and husband and fellow poet Ted Hughes manages to test the rule thanks to its unusual seriousness and first-rate performances. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
It's a coy, cautious film about a frank, fearless writer. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
Compare Sylvia to another, more powerful film about a tragic literary death: "Iris," about Iris Murdoch's descent into Alzheimer's, leaves you with an aching heart and reddened eyes. After the equally sorrowful Sylvia, we are entertained but unmoved. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
In spite of Frieda Hughes' objections, a few snippets of Plath's poetry slip into Sylvia, but they don't do the movie any favors--they just add more weight to a story that already buckles at the knees. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The movie doesn't shed much light on their famously contentious marriage. Instead, it spreads gloom all around.
50
New York PostMegan Lehmann
This frigid and inaccessible period piece wears its glumness like a shroud. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Paltrow looks glam even in death, which only supports the notion, raised by Plath’s daughter Frieda Hughes, that the movie would be about a "Sylvia Suicide Doll." Good call. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
The problem with Christine Jeffs’s Sylvia, as with most movies about deeply troubled artists, is that for the most part we are seeing the troubles and not the artist. Read full review
42
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
The film, bleeding its central character of all shades but black and darkest gray, fails as both biographical chronicle and filmed narrative. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Sylvia also makes it seem as though, even at her happiest, she never received much pleasure from life. This makes for a long, slow procession to the oven door -– so dark, somber, and lifeless is this well-intentioned biography. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
This feature glimpse into the Bell Jar is an exercise in drudgery, with nothing particularly insightful or revealing to say about the charter member of the Suicidal Poets Society and the artistic endeavor in which she would make her indelible mark. Read full review
40
NewsweekDavid Ansen
The film's claustrophobic, color-coordinated dourness yields little illumination, and as the surging violins accompany our heroine's un-raveling mind, the movie comes queasily close to romanticizing suicide. I knew I was supposed to feel something, but what? Read full review
40
Film ThreatPhil Hall
A mediocre film that presents the troubled poet Sylvia Plath as a jealous, possessive and irritating woman. It is hard to recall another biopic which is so unflattering to its subject. Read full review
38
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Never persuasively dramatize the agony, ecstasy and intricacy of composing poetry. Without that aesthetic component, all you see is that Plath's hunger for life couldn't compete with her death wish. Read full review
30
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Seems to avoid any kind of edgy, precedent-making attitude, some point of view that feels charged, divisive and consequently alive. Read full review
30
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Sylvia plays it safe, and in doing so it becomes little more than just another domestic melodrama devoid of life and, of all things, poetry. Read full review
More From This Movie

56 Critic Reviews

6.5 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL