» STORY

[Overview]

Sometimes described by readers as a “female ‘Catcher in the Rye,’” “The Bell Jar” follows Greenwood as she experiences massive, clinical melancholia, through commitment to a mental hospital, electroshock therapy, and several suicide attempts.

[Plot]

The story is told in the first person by Esther Greenwood (Julia), who struggles with her mental illness and is very suicidal.

In The Bell Jar, we read from Esther Greenwood’s point of view: “The sickness rolled through me in great waves. After each wave it would fade away and leave me limp as a wet leaf and shivering all over and then I would feel it rising up in me again, and the glittering white torture chamber tiles under my feet and over my head and all four sides closed in and squeezed me to pieces.”

» CAST

Julia Stiles    …     Ester Greenwood

» JULIA SAYS

“That book is very meaningful to a lot of people, and so we don’t want to disappoint them- In terms of people not wanting to see an indictment of Ted Hughes again, although the book is probably inspired by Sylvia Plath’s personal experience, it is not her autobiography, and it takes place at a time in her life before she met Ted Hughes, although she was writing it while she was married to him. So I’d really like to keep the book separate from her autobiography. What I’m trying to do is make it something that will pleasantly surprise fans of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, because I think her biography has overshadowed the book a lot, and people think of her as this brooding, dark poet, because of her death.

Ask most casual students of English literature and they’ll tell you “The Bell Jar” is one thing above all – effing depressing.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s depressing at all. It is ABOUT depression,” Stiles argued. “But I think that Sylvia Plath writes with such awesome, beautiful, vivid imagery that is so perfect for film, that it’s kind of a joy. I wouldn’t have spent this much time trying to set up the movie if I didn’t love it.”
Part of what makes people think of “The Bell Jar” as depressing, Stiles insists, actually has nothing to do with the book at all – but with the author, who committed suicide one month after the novel’s initial publication.
“I think that a lot of people think Sylvia Plath as being this dark, brooding soul because of her history, her biography overshadows her writing,” Stiles contended. “Actually, her writing was different than that. I think that the vibrant images that she describes in ‘The Bell Jar’ are perfect for a film, maybe even more-so than a novel.”
What makes those images “perfect for film,” Stiles added, was that they take place inside Greenwood’s head – and are therefore limited only by one’s imagination. Which means Stiles is already thinking outside the box about how to introduce them into the movie.
“There should be animation in the film, I think,” she said. “[For instance] There are images where the main character is imagining a fig tree growing. And it grows, and grows, and grows, and she sees all the options in her life of what she can do, what profession she could have as the fruit on the tree. It’s a challenge to be able to realize that, [but] if you imagine a Tim Burton movie like ‘Big Fish.’ If [they] can realize that…”
At one point Greenwood describes her depression as like being stuck under a bell jar, unable to draw breath or escape. What does the “The Bell Jar” ultimately mean to Stiles?
“That sort of artistic spirit, if it doesn’t find it’s way, it doesn’t find it’s channel, if you don’t find an outlet for that,” she said. “It can crush a person.”
Source

Stiles says she wants her version — which is being penned by actress-scribe Tristine Skyler, but still shopping for a director — to be a movie unlike the previous, 1979 version of The Bell Jar, directed by Larry Peerce and starring Marilyn Hassett. “I saw [that movie] and I don’t want it to be anything like that, with all due respect to the people that worked on it,” Stiles says. “Stylishly, the way they shot it was very dark, and the images in The Bell Jar call for something like what Julie Taymor did with Frida, [which capture] that intense artistic drive that Sylvia Plath had, and that Esther Greenwood has in the book. …The character in the book, you could say that she’s almost manic depressive, in that she experiences these extreme highs and extreme lows. And that needs to be reflected, which I don’t think you’ve seen in any other movie that deals with depression.”
“Esther Greenwood has a strong outlook on life, and we’re really looking to bring out the humor in the character,” she said. “We don’t want to do a depressing descent into the world of suicide.”

» FACTS & TRIVIA
Allegedly Stiles sued her former production partners for allegedly conspiring to rob her of a role in a film adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. //Source

The Bell Jar is the only novel by Sylvia Plath.

The book has been repeatedly banned and challenged for its controversial content.

There has already been released a previous The Bell Jar, in 1979.

» LINKS

IMDB – Official Site – Wikipedia