Cultural Opportunity #3-Sylvia

For my third cultural opportunity, I chose to watch the movie Sylvia, mainly because I’ve been studying about the time period when she wrote, which is the Confessional movement. I have really enjoyed her reading her work so far. And I think the poem I’ve enjoyed the most is her poem Cinderella. This poem was also written by Anne Sexton as well, another writer during the Confessional movement. This movie chronicles the suicidal life of Sylvia Plath played by Gwyneth Paltrow. The beginning opens up with her reciting a few lines from her poem Lady Lazarous. This is ironic to me, because she says to Ted in the movie that she is Lady Lazarous. Plath suffered from depression decades before it was branded an illness, and this movie digs deep into the spirituality of her malaise. The Sylvia we see has little or no control over the moods that ultimately tear her existence apart. Plath, as played by Paltrow, is boiling over with literary and erotic hunger, possessed of a vision that scarcely fits into her strict era. In 1956, she's an ambitious undergraduate at Cambridge, and from the moment that she meets Ted Hughes played by Daniel Craig, the gravel-voiced, square-jawed, morosely charismatic British poet who has had the temerity to pen a negative review of her verse, is nothing but love at first bite. At the school dance, she's so smitten with passion that she draws blood from his cheek. This is just a taste of what is come throughout the rest of the movie.