Rating: 
Summary: Quite Beautiful
Review: The movie's two greatest assets are its look and actress. The movie is gold-soaked and amber-hued, the very color of nostalgia and suited perfectly to beautiful blondes. Streep is matchless protraying a wreck of a woman, Sophie. Her Polish accent and German (!!) are flawless, and there is never a false moment or move in her performance as a emotionally and spiritually damaged woman who "survived" the Holocaust and the concentration camps. Kevin Kline is magnetic as Nathan, her passionate, grandiose and occasionally deranged lover. And Peter MacNicol is youthful as the brash Southern would-be writer who falls in their orbit. The film's flaws are its pacing (deadly slow) and the ending. The "choice" the title refers to is put off so long that when it finally happens in flashback, the only feeling is not of discovery or dramatic climax, but of, "Well, finally!" And the ending is badly managed and seemed tacked on without regard to dramatic context and rather formulaic. The end isn't the dramatic climax, rather just a way to finish off the movie. Watch this movie if you want to see some good (and great) actors work their magic in a film that doesn't quite work as cinema should. It's an actor's flick.
Rating: 
Summary: unbelievable!!!
Review: 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:
Summary: Beautiful drama
Review: There are those who like private ryan and those who like the thin red line and there are those who like schnidler's list and those who like sophie's choice. I am of the latter category in both cases. This art house look at unmatched tragedy during the second world war is a great work of art. Meryl Streep is beautiful and shines in every way.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed results, but well worth the ride
Review: There is so much that is right about this film that it seems a shame to point out its flaws, but.... What's right is Meryl Streep. Besides the stunning technical achievements: mastering 2 foreign languages and accents, and a look that ranges from bountiful and beautiful to emaciated and ravaged; Streep creates a multi-dimentional character whom you believe and care about, yet whose mystery makes you need to watch, probe, speculate and question. It's an achievement up there with DeNiro's performance in "Raging Bull" where the actor fully becomes someone else. (I'm always surprised by those who find Streep mannered and unconvincing.) The other thing that's right about the film is the music and cinematography, capturing both a romantic nostalgia for post-war Brooklyn and the dimmed-color, horrific memory of Auschwitz. Much of what I find wrong with the film is also wrong with the book. Nathan turning out to be a druggie nut-case seems contrived--especially in how it is snidely revealed by his brother in the movie. When Stingo is inducted into the "pantheon of great writers" at the Brooklyn Bridge, I couldn't separate the scene from my knowledge that Styron is writing this about HIMSELF! And, when Sophie's memory takes us back to Auschwitz to finally reveal her "choice," it's real hard not to have a "no, not there again" reaction--however much the movie has carried you along. Despite what another has posted here, I find the conclusion right and unavoidable--not tacked on at all. It's a hard movie to watch, with some unfortunate choices made by the author and repeated by the director, but it's ultimately well worth the ride. It's one of those experiences that continues to haunt you, yet--for me--has made me watch the movie several more times over the years.
Rating:
Summary: All about the human condition
Review: This film proved to be excellently suited for a course I teach on an existential/phenomenological perspective on "human pain," (i.e., the anguish that accompanies merely being human.)The human condition is illuminated in all its aspects, from death to absurdity to responsibility and freedom and beyond, and the dramatic portrayals are outstanding, as is the film script derived from Styron's novel.
Rating:
Summary: great movie!
Review: This is a great movie and meryl streep is at her very best
Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: This is a movie that I will never forget. Sophie's plight is one that touches another deeply. I highly recommend the book as well.
Rating:
Summary: Agonizing - in more ways than one
Review: This movie is simply agonizing in more ways than one. First, the bad. This movie is very lengthy - 2 hours and 30 minutes, and let me tell you, I could feel each and every minute sloooowly tick by. The story moves slowly as well, and it's hard to tell - what is real? What is false? Even when Sophie's "choice" is revealed at the end, are we, the audience, sure this is real or just a fabrication? As Sophie says somewhere in the movie, she has told so many lies it is hard to sort the truth from the falsehoods.The movie paints a portait of Stingo (Peter MacNicol, lately of Ally McBeal), a Southern writer who makes the acquaintance of Sophie and Nathan, his upstairs neighbors, and then can't get rid of them. Sophie's a Polish immigrant who has spent time in the concentration camps during WWII, while Nathan is a medical researcher obsessed with the evils of the Holocaust. Why did Sophie survive while so many others died? This is the question that haunts Nathan, and haunts Sophie, whose entire family was murdered in the concentration camps. Eventually, slowly, the story of Sophie emerges to Stingo, as we get some dramatic close-ups of Sophie telling us the story, making it feel more like a play than a movie. We flashback to life in the concentration camps, which has been prepared for us by the sadness which permeated the first half. Truths also begin to emerge about Nathan - and the tragic lives of Sophie and Nathan wind closer towards their end. Meryl Streep? Is just amazing. This is an awe-inspiring piece of work for Streep. She masters different dialects and speaks different languages for much of the film. Her Sophie is simply a haunting image that will stay with you long after the end credits finish. Kevin Kline as Nathan is perfect as well. Peter MacNicol? Well, I can take him or leave him. When the movie ends, you may have to wipe yourself off from the floor - not only from the tragic sadness and despair of the film, but from the mind-numbing length. This movie paints pictures of so much evil and grief it's hard to get over.
Rating:
Summary: Streep is Genius
Review: This movie left me somewhat traumatized.
But not traumitized enough to not buy this
dvd for one of my adult children.
It is really inconprehensible.
This was one of those times when my
wife and I went out to a movie on a Saturday
night for some entertainment, not being
familar with the movie, and we walked out
of that movie like a couple of zombies.
Rating: 
Summary: What makes Meryl Streep the best actress ever...
Review: This movie should be shown to every student in acting, not much as an example of filmmaking, as the film itself is flawed and slowpaced, although truly beautiful in patches, but as an example of acting. Mac Nicol and especially Kline offer very good performances, but the real standout in this movie is of course Meryl Streep, the greatest of them all.
Yes, Katharine Hepburn was charming, yes, Bette Davis' eyes were the silver screen's most expressive ones, yes, one single silent moment in a Greta Garbo movie was well worth the price of the ticket or that of the DVD, yes, Liz Taylor was beautiful and skillful, yes, Jane Fonda was talented and versatile. But when it comes to sheer acting skills Meryl is simply the best. I mean the best of all time. So far she has offered us so many totally different characters speaking different languages and accents that I wouldn't be too surprised seeing her onscreen speaking perfect chinese or albanian in a near future. Personally I don't consider her so much an actress as an incarnation of the character she plays, and she has already pushed this concept to further limits. She is so studied and spontaneous at the same time, poignant, moving, cold, distant, expressive, fascinating, sexy, sometimes even beautiful, economical and parsimonious in her acting. Like de Niro, she simply has no limits at all.
I don't like so much comparing one actor to another, especially actors or actresses that have lived and worked in different decades or centuries, and not only actors; I mean, how can you compare Shakespeare to Hugo, Einstein to Newton, Macchiavelli to Churchill, Mohammed Ali to Michael Jordan, Beethoven to Mozart, Brando to de Niro?
But sometimes it happens that the gap between the best and the rest of them all is so obvious that you can't help comparing and choosing. I just hope that Meryl Streep continues to make more and more beautiful movies and offer us more pleasure and emotions with her acting skills, although quite frankly I don't expect her to top herself, as what she's done in "Sophie's choice" is as good as acting in movies can get. But I don't expect it from any other actress either. Not in the near future anyway.
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