sharp sprawling leviathan of a book
Added 7/27/2009
How adventitious that I picked up "Sophie's Choice" in a used book sale in Ithaca this summer. I was looking for smart romances and knew nothing about this book (never saw the movie either), which turned out to be, mirabile dictu, one of the smartest books I've ever read, romance or not (and it is strown with sexiness).
The narrator, the priapic and jejune Stingo is a Southerner in New York City, and displays an ineluctable wit and humour throughout, despite the sepulchral topics: the Holocaust and Auschwitz, Southern slavery and American racism, domestic violence and mortal grief. Sophie is a Christian Pole in Brooklyn, smart, sweet, and haunted beyond measure. Her lover Nathan is a mesmerising and troubled Jewish scientist.
Their lives, erotic and destructive in turn, are the subject of this sharp sprawling leviathan of a book. I highly recommend it.
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Stuffy but worthy
Added 6/16/2009
The Bottom Line:
One of those prestige-y, Oscar-bait adaptations of a critically-acclaimed work of literature that isn't quite as good as the producers think it is, (see also: The English Patient, The Hours, The Reader, Cold Mountain, etc.) Sophie's Choice is a fairly engaging and compelling piece of drama that is enhanced by Streep and Kline but marred by a overlong running length and a not-especially good Peter MacNicol; it's worth seeing but it's not a great film.
3/4
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Puts the "I" in "Intense"
Added 2/18/2009
Quick. Name me just one bad Meryl Streep performance (or even one mediocre one). I'll wait. (And Mamma Mia doesn't count.)
You're right. There isn't one.
And perhaps Streep's very best role is in the haunting, troubling SOPHIE'S CHOICE. I've seen this film on several occasions, and it's blown my socks off every time. Set in post-World War II Brooklyn, this is a story containing nuance, tenderness, guilt, remorse, discovery. . .raw emotion. And the focal point is Meryl Streep's role as Sophie, a Polish immigrant trying to overcome a most horrific past.
Told from the point of view of young Southern writer Stingo (a very fragile-looking Peter MacNicol), we witness the developing relationships of the three main characters: Stingo, Sophie, and her lover, Nathan (Kevin Kline, who brings this bipolar biologist to vivid life). Stingo, in effect, becomes a third wheel to the couple, and realizes there is more, much more, to Sophie and Nathan than meets the eye. And as we move deeper into the story, we the viewers become privy to more and more of the troubling details of Sophie's European past, until the details become not troubling, but horrific, when Sophie must make a most heart-wrenching choice concerning her two children.
While Kline and MacNicol are exceptional, Streep is absolutely flawless as the beautiful, yet mortally wounded, Sophie. Streep is indeed the motor that drives the intensity of this story--a story that will break your heart as it ends. Streep is not a good actress, she's a great actress; to say SOPHIE'S CHOICE is her very best role gets no argument from me.
--D. Mikels, Author, The Reckoning
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how true is this experience?
Added 2/15/2009
this was such an incredible heart wrenching film that is hard to bear and one wonders why this concept was greenlighted, the secret that not only Jews were persecuted, that a mother had to make a choice about their childrens death in line, that any choice she made was so defensible and no judgement would be incurred by anyone who never experienced such horror???... and to ajudicate an audience's heartstrings became the nouveaux film genre for Oscar wins...I keep thinking that Terms of Endearment followed these footsteps to copy this formula and it makes me insane to think how manipulative producers are to garnish another notch in the knife to the heart...oh well, unbelievable performances by Streep, and Kline was amazing....being a parent I can never disrespect the atrocities of this era but to milk it, esp with the endscene, JEEZ LOUISE!!! I can barely handle I am Sam, let alone this screamplay, I can only cry for so long for my losses, and never feel good enough to earn my sympathy...if I am wrong, my deepest apologies to those whose intent to enlighten us was sincere.
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One of the best performances!
Added 9/10/2008
Meryl Streep delivers one of, if not her best performances in any film I have seen her in. If you are a student of film, you must see this. If you are a fan of film, you must see this. If you are neither, you still must see this. The story is not for the faint of heart, it's a very intense subject matter that will have your mind doing cartwheels. Every performance I see is compared to Streep's performance in this film, leaving me walking away from the theatre saying "well, it was good, but it was no Sophie's Choice." See this film!
Another good film: Postcards from the Edge add it to your cart with Sophie's Choice.
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sort of a neo-classic
Added 3/18/2009
This movie mixes two tales: one modern and one antique.
The tale of a branded scarlet woman of the 19th century in parallel with a modern affair of the two married actors. The harder one is in the modern life version than the happy ending of the of the movie
with requited and unrequited love.
This movie is the one that made Meryl Strep's deserved reputation as an actress.
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Oldie but a goodie
Added 3/4/2009
Good movie but one of Streep's earlier works. She did, in my opinion, better work later in her film career.
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Story Within A Story Concept Works Beautifully In This Film
Added 6/3/2008
This 1981 film version of a famous novel by John Fowles from a few years earlier stars Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons at the height of their youthful attractiveness if not their fame. Streep plays the dual roles of Sarah and Anna. Sarah is the title character, a young Victorian woman whose life has seemingly been ruined by her relationship with a Frenchman who abandoned her. Anna is the modern American actress who portrays her and who is involved in an affair with her costar, Mike, despite them both being in other committed relationships. Jeremy Irons plays this actor, Mike, as well as Sarah's love interest in the film Charles. Charles is a paleontologist and wealthy man of leisure who while recently engaged to a silly rich girl develops an obsession for the mysterious, forlorn but lovely Sarah.
The movie was obviously filmed on location in England and is quite beautiful to look at with lush outdoor scenes and ornate Victorian interiors and costumes. The story within a story approach was not used in the novel but the book would be particularly difficult to faithfully film because it has three alternate endings. The problem with the alternate endings is partly and cleverly solved by using the modern days actors' relationship to portray one of the alternatives while Sarah and Charles' story ends in another possible conclusion offered by the novel. The movie should appeal to those who love the Victorian era, romances or Thomas Hardy as the story is quite reminiscent of some of his novels.
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