Sophie's Choice

Rating:
Summary: Great Acting, Boring Story
Review: Well i gave it a chance but sorry, it simply was too slow for my taste. While Meryl Streep was brilliant as Sophy the story simply dragged along and I lost interest. I may go back and see the edning but I highly doubt it. If there is a compelling story here, or message I did not see it. It would have been better to skip some of the unnecessary scenes and draw the viewr in from the beginning rather then slow pace it along. It may have been great for 82, but for today's fast pace audience it doesn't work very well. I had to put on Friday the 13th, afterwards in order not to feel cheated out of watching a video, now there is a film with action!

Rating:
Summary: Viewing disturbed by technical glitch
Review: What I saw of the movie was fine, but the DVD would not play beyond the 25th chapter of the movie in any player I tried. Anyone else have that problem?

Rating:
Summary: Simply amazing
Review: When I was assigned to watch an historical film for history class last year, I was less than thrilled. In fact, I dreaded having to sit through another hard-to-understand movie with very little real point. I decided on Sophie's Choice without knowing a thing about the film and I shudder to think what might have been had I chosen another video. Sophie's Choice gives us a look at the Holocaust from a different point of view. It doesn't just illustrate the horrors of the time; it shows us how these horrors affected survivors for their whole lives. After watching Sophie's Choice, I was stunned for days. The image of Sophie's daughter being taken to the gas chambers is impossible to shake. With its incredible cast including Kevin Kline, Peter McNichol and Meryl Streep, Sophie's Choice is rare among films. It changes you.

Rating:
Summary: ASTOUNDING!
Review: When talking about this film, you can't help but mention Meryl Streep. She IS this film. Meryl Streep delivers a performance that is technically brilliant, sincere, honest, riveting, heart warming, and heart shattering. This is the best performance by an actor that I have ever seen. Everyone should see this movie simply to watch how a character can come to life. Meryl Streep raised the standards and left us with a haunting portrait of Sophie that we can enjoy forever. Whether you like Meryl Streep or not, you will be impressed by this performance and this film. Truly A MUST SEE!

Rating:
Summary: Streep and Kline in a powerful depiction!!!
Review: Where does one begin to talk about a topic which is portrayed in one of the most disturbing of movies ever made about the Holocaust. This was a long haul, this film which has Meryl Streep portraying Sophie, a woman with a hidden past, and her lover, Kevin Kline, who portrays "Nathan," and off the wall lunatic/poet/prodigy (you guess!) and then there is Peter MacNicol, who is befriended by these two sorts, and the movie progresses as we see Sophie and Nathan at their best loving one another, and at their worst when they hate each other. But through the film, we learn the "secret" of what Sophie's choice entailed, and the story enfolds itself around you until you are weeping with her and getting angry with her, and finally, at the end, getting so disappointed at the ultimate choice she makes, along with her lover. It's not an uplifting film at all, and I would recommend one keeps his or her wits about them when the film is watched. This is a true "thinking cap" movie, and it evokes many feelings. I hope yours are as intact as mine were, or I thought they were. But of course my wife hated the movie, much more for the choice Sophie had to face in Nazi Germany, than for anything else, and she cried and cried and cried - something she doesn't like to do, but it proved the movie really moved her. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Somewhere Between A 4 And A 5!
Review: William Styron's great novel by the same name is on my list of the ten best American novels ever. This film, for all the things it has going for it-- and there are many-- does not make my list of ten best movies. First the good: Meryl Streep deserved the Oscar she won for the role of Sophie, the Polish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. (On the other hand, I think she deserves an Oscar for practically everything she has ever done.) She is totally believable here, never gets out of character, and in spite of the catty critics who always talk about her many accents, her accent here is perfect. Her scenes in the concentration camp are almost too painful to watch. Kevin Kline is great as the tortured, crazed Nathan. (Although this was his first starring role, he has gone on to other fine performances.)The cinamatography is by the brilliant Nestor Amendros, who as best I can tell never shot a bad movie. Now the less than good: Stingo is miscast although I cannot put my finger on just what is wrong about the way he is portrayed in the movie. I just know his character doesn't always work for me. My chief criticism, which I know is unfair, is that the movie is not the book and pales when compared to Styron's novel. Mr. Styron develops his three principal characters through paragraph after paragraph of details, making them as alive as your next door neighbor. Had I not read the novel, I'm not sure I would have understood Nathan's demons. It's a lot easier to portray a sympathetic schizophrenic (Nathan) in a novel than in a movie; at least Styron does a much better job than does the director here.

SOPHIE'S CHOICE, however, is a very beautiful movie and well worth watching-- for as many times as you can endure the pain.

Rating:
Summary: Meryl Streep has never been best!
Review: You may consider from now to Meryl Streep as one of the twenty best actress of the XX century . Her magnetism is so powerful in every performance she makes than it is impossible to ignore her.
Nevertheless her last performances in screen have been extremely geometric meticulous cold and apollinean without that expresivity we can watch in this film .
She was in the peak of her powers . And in fact she supports the film like at least in a 95% .
The script was brilliant writen in the best european style . Resource economy , but with fine dialogues and excellent edition and superb photography .
Kevin Kline made the best acting of all his career in the role of this disturbed man .
The film is told in off for Sophie herself . Her hell stage in the concentration camp . Thanks to her domain of the german language she could survive .
But after the horror has gone , she can not avoid to remake her emotional life . In this sense the dramatic parallel runs equal with the pawnbroker , since the memory and its multiple awful images simply can not be erased , even the happiness had been to few steps from her .
The film was carefully filmed with masterful direction .
Superb and consider this work and Schindler list as the supremes american films focusing this painful theme!