Don't rent 'Sylvia,' read her

The problem with "Sylvia," a biopic starring Gwyneth Paltrow as the unstable poet Sylvia Plath, is the same problem many films about artists encounter: you'll learn more about them by experiencing their art than you will from a scenes-in-the-life-of cinematic depiction of them.\nConsidering that, "Sylvia" comes off as just too ordinary. Plath's 1963 suicide frames the way many people view her work. Director Christine Jeffs pays considerable attention to Plath's troubled marriage to British poet Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig) and on her neurotic (and correct) suspicions of his infidelities. But for Jeffs, it's all too casually tragic, as if every shot had Plath's suicide in mind rather than seizing the many opportunities to expose the poet suffocating under the shadow of her own death.\nThis isn't a bad film; it's just not a particularly good one. There's nothing on the DVD except the film. It might have been beneficial if there were something else, perhaps a special feature showcasing some of the poems mentioned in the film. \nSince there's not, if you're interested in Plath, I suggest you head to the library for a collection of her poems rather than to the video store for this film.