Title: They Shouldn't Have Proceeded without the Poetry
Review: Sylvia Plath is one of the great female poets of all time, in league with Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, and the underrated Louise Gluck. "Ariel" may be the finest book of poems by a woman EVER, vivid, dark, trilling, grisly, and gorgeous. That book, her last, is available in a lovely new hardbound with previous drafts and interesting information.Get that, rather than this film, because the filmmakers were barred from quoting very much of her poetry or excerpting lines from her best novel "The Bell Jar," and without her powers of the written word on display, we don't know why a movie about Sylvia Plath would even be made.All we have is a dysfunctional woman succumbing to suicidal depression. Poets' lives are seldom impressive; it's their work we remember! See "As Night Falls" for a much better example of a poet bio-pic; it has a far more interesting plot and is soaked in the man's vibrant poetry.
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