Sylvia 2003

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1932, Sylvia Plath demonstrated a precocious talent for writing, publishing her first poem at the age of eight and facing the heartbreak of her father’s death the same year. Her path through school was marked by distinction at Smith College, where she earned a literary scholarship in 1950, but beneath the academic shine she battled severe depression, even attempting suicide during her junior year. Her resilience carried her across the Atlantic when, in 1955, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in England at the University of Cambridge.

The film opens with a quiet, intimate glimpse of Plath as she drifts from sleep to wakefulness, a mood that threads through her Cambridge years. While there she rides a red bicycle through campus life, donning an academic gown, and attends a party that marks the publication of a literary magazine called St. Botolph’s. It is at this gathering that she encounters the captivating young poet Ted Hughes. Their immediate chemistry becomes the engine of a rapid, intense romance that escalates into marriage in 1956, a union that transports them first to Massachusetts to stay with her mother Aurelia, and later across the Atlantic back to England.

Back in the States, both of them teach at Smith College, but it soon becomes clear that Hughes’s magnetism, talent, and fame attract more than their peers’ admiration—there is a tension that begins to simmer around Plath’s own writing ambitions. The couple moves from Boston to London and then to Devon, where Sylvia Plath raises their two children while living in her husband’s professional shadow as she fights to carve out her own voice. The film highlights how crowded this orbit can feel, with others drawn to Hughes’s charisma and success even as Plath strains to find her place.

A turning point comes after a visit from David and Assia Wevill, an encounter that intensifies the strain in their marriage. Plath openly accuses Ted Hughes of infidelity, reacts with a fierce resolve, and ultimately ejects him from their home. In the ensuing months, she channels her pain into the poems that will later appear in her landmark Ariel collection, a body of work that many readers now see as a culmination of her fierce, unflinching voice. She then moves back to London with her children, striving to sustain both family and craft amid mounting personal conflict.

The holiday season brings a painful closeness as Hughes returns home for Christmas and the two share a moment of intimacy; yet the film makes clear that he cannot leave Assia, who is pregnant, adding another layer of tragedy to the narrative. In a stark, haunting sequence, Plath prepares for the unthinkable—sealing the gas oven to end her life. A nurse arrives to take the children away, and Hughes confronts the stark truth of his wife’s dying manuscript left on her desk. The closing moments of the film underscore the enduring resonance of her work: her Ariel poems bring her lasting fame, while Hughes would later respond in the 1998 collection Birthday Letters, published just before his own death.

This portrait blends biographical detail with a lyrical sense of atmosphere, inviting viewers to witness how a gifted writer balances love, art, and the ache of unmet expectations. The film makes clear that the two people at its heart—Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes—shaped each other’s legacies in ways that feel both intimate and universal, even as their lives spiral toward tragedy. The result is a nuanced, moving meditation on creativity under pressure, the costs of ambition, and the enduring power of a voice that refuses to fade.