I remember reading this one on my way to Southampton to be interviewed by professors, I'd applied to the university there, it being as far away from Nottingham as I could conceive in those days. I remember I had ridiculously long hair in those days too. But these things are not relevant. I'm not sure I'm up to reviewing the Bell Jar, much less Ariel, so instead.... here's a review of the movie SYLVIA which I hated and which has a few things to say about the Sylvia and Ted Show. 
 A MOVIE REVIEW 
 The facts of the matter of Ted and Sylvia are well known, this movie presents them soberly, there are no cranky theories on offer (she may be the only American celebrity the CIA did not murder). On the surface what happened is banal, a marriage which went quickly wrong, and her left with two little kids. Happened all the time and still does. So what. But here's two Giant Poets doing what everyone else does. 
 The genre known as the biopic tends towards the cartoon (Ah, Wilde, let me introduce you to my friend Whistler. I'm sure you'll find him most amusing... So, Oliver Cromwell, we meet at last.) and this portrait of Sylvia Plath in pre-feminist, pre-swinging 60s, pre-rock, pre-nearly everything late 1950s England, trapped like a bird in a house flying bang into the windows time and again trying painfully to escape, veers close to pure caricature. 
 Sample dialogue : 
 Sylvia : How was your walk? 
 Ted: Good. I got a poem. A good one. 
 Sylvia: I'm dried up. 
 Ted: Cause you've got nothing to say. 
 Sylvia: I'm no good. 
 Ted: You make great cakes. 
 Cue great offstage feminist moaning and gnashing. Then Ted says some useful blokeish things, like this. They're talking about writing poetry, they never talk about anything else: "There's no secret to it, you just have to pick a subject and stick your head into it." Sylvia retorts : "You go out for a bike ride and come back with an epic in hexameters - I sit down to write, I get a bake sale." A little later, on their honeymoon, they're in a dinghy rowing in the sea when Ted suddenly realises - he's out of his depth! ("the tide's dragging us out - I can't get us back in... people drown like this...") Heavy handed metaphor? Er, let me think. Okay, I've thought - YES, I think so! And so under waves of risible dialogue like that, the movie slowly sinks whilst the captain stands bravely on deck saluting to the last - that would be Gwyneth Paltrow, who gives a fine Paltrified performance, but what can even she do? 
 Middle aged woman to Ted after his lecture : Mr Hughes, your voice is so.... powerful. 
 Ted : But what did you think of the words? 
 Middle-aged woman (blankly) : ....the words? 
 Cue Sylvia smiling ironically. Cue audience rolling eyes and nudging each other - "I reckon there's Trouble Ahead!" Yes, we get it. Ted's a wow with the ladies. So it seems that these big name high toned poets have relationships which turn on the tedious negotiations of sexual fidelity just like everyone. No, really. And in this grisly movie sexual and creative jealousy is given to us as the whole cause of Sylvia's misery. Her extremely disturbed adolescence is alluded to twice but never examined. So, it was ted. He done it! Just as I thought! 
 Sylvia Plath was a prisoner - of the 1950s and its common or garden sexism, of Ted Hughes, of her own ambition, of her marriage, of her children, and she was in an almost permanent rage. The only time she captured and channelled this rage was in the six month burst of energy in late 62 and early 63 when she wrote the Ariel poems, which collectively form one of the essential documents of the 20th century. This really unnecessary film cannot illuminate what happened. It peers at the photogenic surfaces. What was Ted thinking? What about Sylvia's friends - we only see one, Al Alvarez - had she scared them off? Why did she become suicidal? I mean. depressed, okay, but suicidal? She knew she had a brilliant talent. She knew she would do great things. Was she born a suicide, as some people are born junkies? What the hell was she thinking, with her two little kids in the next room? This was no ordinary despair. Is this movie for those who haven't read Sylvia or those who have? Either group would have many complaints. 
 Avoid the Paltrification of Sylvia Plath, read Ariel.