Sylvia
is the second feature film by director Christine Jeffs (Rain). She was
brought onto the project somewhat late after a script had already been written
and Gwyneth Paltrow signed to play doomed poetess Sylvia Plath. Christine
nevertheless managed to infuse the project with her own sensibilities, such as a
removal of much of the story’s exposition and a reliance on images to convey
emotional states.
Instead of focusing on the literary success of Sylvia Plath, of which there
wasn't a great deal during her life, the movie tells the story of her
relationship with husband Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig). Her writing is almost
relegated to the far background – but in doing so, the film chooses to dramatize
what she wrote about: herself.
Upon meeting Christine, a native of New Zealand, I immediately connected her
personality to her work: a little shy and certainly soft-spoken, but with an
internal reservoir she can easily tap into. With wavy dark hair and dark eyes
she remains humble in her attractiveness, as though, like her voice, she likes
to keep it close.
We spoke last week at The Mercer, in SoHo, and she confessed that she’d been
talking so much since she arrived that she was starting to feel a bit
light-headed. Regardless, she was enthusiastic about Sylvia and quite
forthcoming about her experiences.
JAMIE STUART: I wanted to ask, not what attracted you to Sylvia as a
prospect for a movie, so much as, why did you want to take somebody inherently
known as a literary figure and try to translate her into film?
CHRISTINE JEFFS: Well, I wasn’t involved in developing the film. I came to it
and the script was written – the project had already been conceived by the
producer. John Brownlow wrote the script. They offered me the movie after
another director had departed the ship, as it were. But I had read Sylvia when I
was younger and I connected with the imagery; her emotional landscape was really
strong. So when they told me about the movie – and really it was a love story,
not kind of a literary story where she’s a great writer – I just thought, well,
it would be really interesting to explore the relationship between her and Ted
Hughes.
JS: I know part of this was due to the rights, not being able to include a great
deal of their writing, but it almost seemed that instead the way to illustrate
that aspect was through imagery. What their states might have been. I was
watching it thinking of Antonioni and how he would use landscapes. For example,
during the winter, it was very symbolic of what was going on between them. Ted’s
walking with the snow coming down.
CJ: Yeah, I did try to – I was inspired by the visuals on their part, and even
carried their poetry around with me when we shot. I really tried to open up the
film with that. I felt that anything I could bring to the film visually should
be quite lyrical and reflect the poetry. It was a way of doing it without it
being in the dialogue. I hoped to try and bring some of that through.
JS: Another thing I noticed was that there wasn’t a great deal of exposition. It
just jumps ahead and the next thing you know it’s a year later. And nobody’s
stopping the story to explain that it’s a year later.
CJ: Yeah. True. The narrative does move forward quickly. Like suddenly they’ve
got kids, for example. Or suddenly they’ve moved to the country. Suddenly
they’re in England. Hopefully, because of the way the narrative is constructed,
there’s a trigger in the previous sequence that throws you into the next.
Hopefully, that’s the way it works. I think it was a good choice.
JS: I’m so used to unneeded exposition. I was watching Mystic River, the
Clint Eastwood film…
CJ: Oh, I haven’t seen it yet.
JS: It was the type of thing where every once in a while there’d be a scene
maybe between two cops, and you can just tell they’re using the dialogue to
explain what’s going on.
CJ: Yeah…I hate that.
JS: It’s not a conversation that actual cops would have.
CJ: Plot exposition in dialogue is one of my pet hates actually. I try to avoid
that. If there’s anything like that in a script I boot it out the door. There
must still be some in there, I don’t know.
JS: I also thought it was interesting…I’m looking at it from a filmmaking
perspective – and I assume these things were intentional – I noticed a lot of
the times that you would frame Gwyneth off to the side of the frame. She’s not
center, but almost marginalized.
CJ: Yeah, it’s interesting cause John is great at framing and I love
compositions. We’re very much together on that. He came up with the split-screen
kind of feel where she’s sitting on the couch and he gets home. They come
together and it’s like, Oh, my God, they’re going to come together in an angry
way! He was like, Let’s put the camera here! It was this tiny cupboard space and
no one could get near him. The grips were tripping over themselves.
JS: Backed into a corner.
CJ: There was no room to do anything. He jammed the camera on his shoulder and
squeezed into this place. The focus puller couldn’t get in there. He did that
all the time. Let’s put the camera here! Always the most difficult place. But
always getting good shots.
JS: There was also a lot of source lighting.
CJ: It was very natural, I think. John likes that. But I think it was also quite
styled in that there’s a great luminescence to the skin tones and she sort of
glows in a way. The backgrounds fall away. There were so many interiors that I
wanted the characters’ personalities to come through – not be like, Oh, that’s
interesting décor. I think he created kind of a painterly feeling with that
style.
JS: It also does something – Kubrick did a lot with source lighting – it does
something to the timing of the light. It’s naturally falling on somebody, as
opposed to there being an artificial rim-light.
CJ: Yeah, John’s really into natural stuff. When staging scenes he says, It has
to happen here. I’m like, Why? He’s like, Because there’s a window here. It’s a
nice way.
JS: There was one shot of Ted writing at night at the desk, and the only thing
on is one light. So there’s a little bit of illumination on his face and his
work, and everything around him is black.
CJ: John’s really brave like that. He can make it quite dark. I really love the
way it looks. We didn’t have much time either, so it was really smart to be
natural about it. We wouldn’t have had time to fuss about. I think Gwyneth looks
really beautiful as well. Sylvia has this kind of luminescence when she’s
looking up to that light. There’s this melted kind of quality to it. Kind of
surreal. Her eyes seem to be popping out. For shots like that, John was just
standing on this apple box trying to hold a 35mm camera on his shoulder. It was
just lit by the light bulb. It’s amazing the kinds of things that, if you’ve got
an eye for it, you can create with naturally beautiful images.
JS: How was it assembling the cast? Even the small roles had recognizable
people.
CJ: Gwyneth was already on the movie and she cast me. She was like, I liked your
first movie. And Alison liked it, so they talked about it. My casting director
Karen Lindsay Stewart did an amazing job. They were amazing actors for cameos.
Well, they were significant, they were key characters in Sylvia’s life – but I
think people really wanted to work with Gwyneth and they really loved the
script. They wanted to work on a movie about Sylvia. So we’d say to Michael
Gambon, Would you like to play this part? He was like, Sure! It was wonderful to
have actors of that caliber supporting us.
JS: Yeah, you would not normally see actors of his stature in a role like that.
CJ: And Jared Harris as well. And Blythe.
JS: You kind of had an in with Blythe.
CJ: I don’t know. Yeah, I think she was excited to work with Gwyneth. It was
really special. To see that whole mother/daughter dynamic was fascinating.
JS: I’m starting to like Jared’s work. I’m seeing more and more of it.
CJ: Oh yeah! I think he’s magnificent in the role of Alvarez! That look on his
face when Sylvia says she’s thinking about taking a lover. He’s just like: Who
me? And she’s like, Hmmm…I guess I said the wrong thing here. I love that
moment. It’s very translatable. I’ve been there or I could imagine being there.
All of the characters are playing it real. It’s not melodramatic.
JS: That was another thing: usually when you see biopics, a) there’s usually a
lot of exposition to explain what’s going on, and b) they’re totally trying to
make you empathize with the main character, trying to show
how great that person is. It’s like they’re trying to justify why they’ve made a
film about this person. This just seemed like you were telling a story.
CJ: And that’s good.
JS: To go back a little, what was it about the emotional landscape of Sylvia
that you related to and wanted to capture on film?
CJ: I think she felt things really strongly. Her feelings were right under her
skin. They were right there and able to pop out at anytime. I think she had a
lot of very extreme emotions. She was very up and very down. So I think that was
fascinating in terms of looking at that character and how it might compare to
her relationship with the love of her life. It was the intense emotional life
that she had. You get that from reading her journals and poems. The writer spoke
to various people who knew her.
JS: There’s that one scene, the first time that they’ve slept together and
they’re lying in bed – and she tells him that she’s already tried to commit
suicide. And he continues the relationship!
CJ: She laughs. She kind of laughs it off. She says, I was there, but I rose up
again like Lady Lazarus. A smile comes across his face and her face, sort of
like she’s saying she’s been there and done that. He didn’t know what he was
getting in for.
JS: It almost seemed like he was attracted to that. What was it about her
that made her the love of his life?
CJ: I don’t think he had ever come across anyone like her before. If you read
some of his poems in Birthday Letters which describe the first time he saw her,
she’s like this luminescent woman. At the dance where they met she hit him with
a bolt of lightning. He’d never come across anyone with her force of personality
and drive. The poems are very illuminating in terms of his love for her. They’re
very revealing.
JS: Do you think perhaps the fact that she was American had an effect?
CJ: She was different. Absolutely. She was the girl in red. She was always
wearing the brightest colors. Huge contrast. Blondish hair. Sort of vibrant
personality. And he loved women, so…
JS: It was interesting in the scene where Blythe is saying, Usually she
intimidates the other men, but here I think she’s intimidated by you. From an
artistic perspective I totally understand that. Like I’ll get totally wrapped up
in what I’m doing, totally stressed out. I’ll totally respect and relate to a
person who stands up to me.
CJ: Yeah, totally.
JS: Just, Knock it off! Everything’s fine!
CJ: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
JS: Volcanic personalities need other volcanic personalities.
CJ: The other person’s gotta be just as strong.
JS: Do you think the film’s going to be accessible for people who aren’t so
familiar with Sylvia?
CJ: Yeah, I think so. It’s about a relationship. It’s a love story. It’s a
tragic love story. I think they loved each other, but they couldn’t live
together. In a broader sense it’s a very attractive story. It’s very sad. It is
about two creative people, so you get an insight into the creative process.
Hopefully it’ll encourage people to go open up their books and look at the
dialogue between his poetry and her poetry. There are events that are described
in her poems, then the same is described in his poems and you go, My God, they
saw things so differently! He was this man and she was this woman. He was
English and she was American. And they came together and saw things differently.
Like, no wonder they clashed!
JS: But you had their actual poetry, their actual thoughts and emotions to work
off of. They both documented their experiences of the same experiences.
CJ: Yeah. They both had huge passions and were able to translate it creatively.
It was a great source.
JS: For a long time a lot of people blamed him.
CJ: Well Birthday Letters came out a few weeks before his death. No one had ever
had any insights except people who were close to him. He hadn’t spoken about
this relationship with Sylvia so it was a huge revelation. Major.
JS: I remember when it came out. All the press about it. But after all, he was
the person who oversaw the publication of Ariel, which should say something.
CJ: Exactly. I mean, when he put his hand on that and he kisses her at the end
of the movie…
JS: But of course that’s also the problem when you have somebody of her stature,
someone related to on such a deep and profound level – everybody’s going to have
their own relationship with her work.
CJ: That’s exactly right. Everyone’s formed a strong and personal relationship
with her work. Opinions about who she was and who he was.
JS: Have you run into any difficulties like that?
CJ: Because this is early in the process I think I’m beginning to explore it. I
think people are really interested in the balance of the movie. Some people are
glad we didn’t criticize Ted too harshly, others think he got off lightly.
People seem to have stronger opinions about him in a way, cause he was the one
who didn’t speak for years. There was this whole thing that he killed his wife.
For years. I think opinions are changing, with time and Birthday Letters coming
out. Now we look on things differently. We look on depression differently.
Relationships differently. I don’t think people will see it the same way they
did when their work was first published.
Copyright 2003 Jamie Stuart
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