Sophie's Choice
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Movie Reviews of Sophie's Choice
Movie Review: Streep proves she is the best!
Summary: 5 Stars
I am so interested in analyzing films that I took a couple of cinema studies' classes in University, although I'm in Finance. I usually consider all aspects of the film (performances, script, direction, set design, lighting, millieu, mise-en-scene, etc.) before judging if it's good or bad. But with this film, Meryl Streep did it for me. Her amazing performance blew me away. It is the best performance I have ever seen so far. Other great performances by actresses: Jessica Lange in "Frances", Lili Taylor in "I Shot Andy Warhol", Meryl Streep in {"One True Thing", "Silkwood", "The French Lieutenant's Woman"}, Sally Field in "Norma Rae", Elizabeth Taylor in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?", Bette Davis in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?", and others. I have also made lists of the best performances by actors, the most risque movies ever made and others. If interested, e-mail me.Movie Review: Meryl Streep is simply exceptional
Summary: 5 Stars
Probably everyone has seen this movie, and probably everyone knows the premise, and probably everyone knows what Sophie's choice was and why it's slowly driving her crazy. But just in case there's a viewing population who is still clueless about this movie (based on the best-selling novel by William Styron), I'm not going to say too much so as not to give it away - because I was stunned with the enormity of it when I saw the movie for the first time and don't want to ruin that potential element of horrible surprise for new viewers.Setting: Brooklyn, just after WWII.
Characters: Stingo (a young idealistic writer), Sophie (a Polish war survivor of the Holocaust), and Nathan (Sophie's lover, played in his movie debut by Kevin Klein)
Plot line: Something horrible happened to Sophie during her time in a Nazi concentration camp, and details are slowly revealed through a series of harrowing flashbacks.
Advice: See this movie. It's one of the best ever.
Movie Review: But don't see it until after you've read the book
Summary: 5 Stars
Sophie's Choice is both a love story and a tale of such unbearable horror that human beings can barely comprehend it. It is, first, a brilliant film: Streep and Kline both give the performances of their lives. It is a near-perfect screen rendering of a great novel. My mistake was in seeing the film long ago, some years before I had the stomach to pick up the book and read it through. I was completely unprepared for what I was about to see: the brutalities, the madness, most of all the real nature of Sophie's choice itself. I'd taped the film. I taped over it. I hope never to have to watch it again. The book allows you to ease yourself into the story and make the awful discoveries at the climax, cushioned in a way by Styron's magnificent writing and narrative skill. If you come to the film without knowing what you're getting yourself into, you're preparing for nightmares that will haunt you forever. Maybe they're supposed to.Movie Review: Best performance by an actress, all-time
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Movie Review: Sophie's Choice
Summary: 5 Stars
Longish though compelling drama about a Polish woman, Sophie (Meryl Streep) who has endured Auschwitz; her schizophrenic Jewish lover, Nathan (Kevin Kline), who torments her; and a young Southern writer, Stingo (Peter MacNicol), who lives in the same Brooklyn tenement with them shortly after the war. Both Nathan and Stingo are in love with her, which figures into part of Sophie's "choice"; late in the film we are exposed to her other choice, made during her concentration camp days, which has riddled her life with guilt - a guilt that forces her to choose the sadistic Nathan and eventual suicide.
The characterizations are excellent - we are drawn in despite the length and lavish development (the use of a narrator helps here); the acting is superb (Streep won an Oscar). It's a very moving and intelligent performance. An excellent movie; definitely worth a watch.