Sophie's Choice | | Cast : | Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol | | Director : | Alan J. Pakula | | Studio : | Artisan Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | December 08, 1982 | | DVD Released Date : | April 07, 1998 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 26, 2005 | | Summary | Best performance by an actress, all-time | Content
 | Streep's performance here is awe-inspiring. Even Kevin Kline said so. He said that sometimes he forgot his lines, he was so transfixed by Streep's. No one else even comes close, especially not Katherine Hepburn (even less Audrey Hepburn). Only some of Streep's other roles rival this one. Beyond that, this film should have won not only cinematography that year, as it says above, but best picture. Gandhi was good, this is better. Kline holds his own with what is still his best performance, and even MacNichol is not completely swamped. I think he is miscast, but at a second viewing (and forgetting the book) he begins to grow on you. Speaking of the book, this is one film that is better than the book--for an other example, see Blade Runner. Styron's book has some nice passages, and is full of good ideas, but artistically it is a mess. It cries out for a super-edit, and this film does that pretty well. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 03, 2005 | | Summary | unbelievable!!! | Content
| the scene that i was really mesmerized how a great convinsing actress meryl is when she was "marching" together with a woman"most probably a hitler collaborator" the setting was a muddy field almost a size of a football field ,with the background showing delapidated makeshift cells for the would be victims of the eventual holocuast....meryll is very malnourished and cathectic and hopeless affect! i commend the director who was smart not to cut this very important scene!!! i's almost imposible to use a "double" only meryl can do it!!!!i can not imagine the reactioons of the post-holocoust survivors the moment they see this particular scene!!! BRAVO AND BRAVO TO MS. MERYLL STREEP!!!!!! ! |
| Rating | | | Date | December 18, 2004 | | Summary | Death Dreams of Mourning | Content
| "There are so many things you do not understand. There are so many things I cannot tell you. And the truth does not make it easier to understand."
So says Sophie Zawistowski, the tormented woman at the center of "Sophie's Choice." Alan J. Pakula's film of William Styron's novel stands proudly alongside "Schindler's List" as a document of the Holocaust, but while the latter film tells the story of a people, this movie chooses to tell one woman's unspeakable story. Everything about "Sophie's Choice" is right. Pakula's direction and screenplay are superb, and the cinematography by Nestor Almendros is breathtakingly beautiful. The centerpiece of the film, however, is Meryl Streep's Oscar-winning performance as Sophie (probably the most deserved win in history) and the equally brilliant turns by Kevin Kline (in his first film role) and a very young Peter MacNicol.
A young writer named Stingo (MacNicol) comes to Brooklyn "on a voyage of discovery," and while living there meets Sophie and Nathan (Streep and Kline), two lovers who quickly befriend him. Stingo soon developes a crush on Sophie, and learns that she is a survivor of Auschwitz. While the seductive Nathan becomes ever more dangerous, Stingo gradually learns the secrets of Sophie's past, a past filled with terrible secrets and unbearable pain and guilt.
Meryl Streep gives possibly the best film performance ever as Sophie, completely becoming the Polish Holocaust survivor. The range and complexity of her performance is astonishing. Streep has many monologues as Sophie where she reveals more an more of the horrors she witnessed in the concentration camps, and these are all filmed in close up on Streep's face. It's riveting. As played by Streep, Sophie is a woman filled with immense hope, but also haunted by suffering, her eyes almost always close to tears. The final scene of "the choice" is almost unbearable in its intensity and will disturb you for days. A monumental performance that never seems like acting.
As an actor, Kevin Kline tends to go over the top, but he does some of his best work ever in "Sophie's Choice" as the demented Nathan. His mood swings from lovable to terrifying are completely believable, and quite scary. Peter MacNicol also makes the most of Stingo, probably the least interesting character. As the film's narrator, his subtle and honest work holds the movie together. Without him, it wouldn't work.
At 150 minutes, "Sophie's Choice" is a little overlong. Alan J. Pakula was so concerned about being faith to the book that there are several scenes that probably should have been left on the cutting room floor. However, the movie is a remarkable achievement, one that will make you cry and leave you completely absorbed the entire time. "Sophie's Choice" plays like a mystery. You can't look away until you find out the terrible secret of her past. But don't be surprised when the answer breaks your heart. |
| Rating | | | Date | October 20, 2004 | | Summary | A Compelling and Tragic Tale | Content
| Set in Brooklyn in 1947, Sophie's Choice is an haunting, deep, of three people, whose lives are deeply intertwined, in Brooklyn - 1947:
Stingo (Peter MacNicol): An aspiring young author from the South, who has made his way to Brooklyn to pursue his writing career.
Sophie (Meryl Streep): A Polish war refugee, who has survived Auschwitz, and who's past is one of horrors we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.
Nathan Landau: Sophie's mercurial and volatile lover, who is obsessed (if that is the right word) with hunting for escaped Nazis, and whose moods swing between joy of life and extreme generosity one moment and vicious, black rages the next.
The first half of the movie revolves around the close friendship between Stingo, Nathan and Sophie, as well as the passionate relationship between Nathan and Sophie. The second part takes us to Sophie's nightmarish experiences during the Second World War, and ultimately the heartbreaking scene where a Nazi officer forces her to decide which of her two children will survive and which will be taken off to die in a crematorium.
It is a movie both about the pathos and anxiety of each individual, and of the agony and evil of a world gone mad i.e. Europe during the holocaust, at a time when we are faced with mass terrorism , sympathy for terrorism and a resurgence of anti-semitism and totalitarian ideas.
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| Rating | | | Date | September 09, 2004 | | Summary | I don't believe this is fiction | Content
| I read the book the moment it hit the stands because I was already a huge William Styron fan. I had a first edition! (Then I lent it to someone, and oh well, we all know the end of that story.) I just about reached a moment of person ecstacy (nice way to put it , eh?)when I heard Meryl Streep was chosen to play Sophie.(My other mental choice was Faye Dunaway - Meryl is better, no question.) And when I saw the movie, like the book they kept peeling away layer after layer of her story until in the end we 'know' her truth. I have it on DVD and watch at least once a year. It reaches me, it scares me, it touches my soft places and hardens my defensive ones. It makes me question how the character survives at all, instead of just having a psychotic break in the camp (which would have been certain death). It is perhaps the most horrible of horror movies where it is
horrific, and the most touching of character pieces where Sophie
is "made to bloom like a rose" in her humour, her humanity, and her regained health. It makes me laugh at all of Sophie's gentle and telling abuses of the language as she translates in her head and then speaks in a rather tortured eegnleesh. And it is also a remarkable movie for the sensitivity and strength of the three lead performances (Kevin Kline's debut!). Alan Pakula adapted and directed in a masterful sweep : history of the very large, and the very small. If he had never made another movie, this would be enough (but of course he did make others). It is hard to convince people (especially mothers) that they will
enjoy the book or the film, because they all aready think they know what "Sophie's choice" is....but the point is that Sophie makes choices on many levels throughout the film - all of which promise salvation of a sort, and deliver something quite different. It is a tragedy in all too human terms, because in all liklihood, it is NOT fiction. At a certain, high school age, this is the movie that students should watch when they start asking why there was a Second World War, and what evil lurks in the hearts of men, and why is there an Israel? If you have been thinking of renting it, or buying it, or reading it, I strongly recommend opening yourself to the experience. You will be richly rewarded and 'touched' everywhere. ".....and I knew that only a Jesus who no longer cared for me could take all of these peoples, that I did loved so much, away from me and leaving me here.........alive." "The truth. The truth the truth. I do not know anymore what is the truth. After all of these lies that I have told.......You want to know the truth?" Haunting. |
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