Sophie's Choice
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DVD details
Actor: Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Peter MacNicol, Rita Karin, Stephen D. NewmanBrand: LION'S GATE ENTERTAINMENT
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 150 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-04-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lions Gate
DVD Reviews of Sophie's Choice
DVD Review: Beautiful Film, but...
Summary: 4 Stars
I read Styron's novel, Sophie's Choice, when it first came out. I was mesmerized all the way through. I didn't go to see the movie in the theatre because, knowing the story, I didn't want to be depressed. A couple of years ago, I bought the movie, but it sat on the shelf for a long time, unwatched until last night when I viewed it with my family, none of whom had read the book.
My Polish husband left the room about half way through because he just couldn't stand to be reminded of things that were way too real for him. The rest of us continued to watch, hypnotized by the inexorable unfolding of the tragedy. After it was over, nobody spoke for a very long time. It's that kind of movie.
There is something about the movie, though, that disturbs me. You see, the book had a certain emphasis that was excluded from the movie version. In Styron's novel, he is explicit about the parallels between the Nazi/Jew atrocities and the terrible abuses of the American South against Black Americans. This was an important theme - the universality of suffering - that he then developed more fully by making Sophie, a NON-Jew, the center of the story. In the novel, the suffering of the Jews IS discussed, but it is made quite clear that Hitler's main target was the Slavs. He carefully makes his case that the Holocaust is NOT an exclusively Jewish experience or tragedy. The fact is, 6 million Polish citizens were killed by the Nazis, only half of which were Jews. The other three million victims were Polish Christians and Catholics. For the Nazis, the Poles were, in fact, the First Target: "All Poles will disappear from the world.... It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles." (Heinrich Himmler)
Hitler quickly took control of Poland by specifically targeting and eliminating the Polish Intelligentsia. During the next few years, millions of other Polish citizens were rounded up made slaves for German farmers and factories or taken to concentration camps where they were either starved and worked to death or used for scientific experiments.
The Jews in Poland were forced inside ghettos, but the non-Jews were made prisoners in the concentration camps very early, as well as inside their own country. No one was allowed out.
That's what Sophie's Choice was about, mainly: the suffering of the Poles, and Sophie exemplified this suffering. But this major theme has been completely lost in the movie version.
Nathan, the "spokesman for the Jews" in the story, is a paranoid schizophrenic which might be considered a subtle way to portray the "paranoid" nature of the Jewish claim for Holocaust exclusivity. Entwined with the major theme of the book is Nathan's inability to cope with the fact that Sophie, a Polish-Catholic, experienced horrifying sufferings that were claimed to be exclusively Jewish.
The monstrous decision that Sophie is forced to make (sometimes idiomatically used as way of describing a choice between two unbearable options, a "Sophie's Choice"), is not even fully portrayed in the film version. In the novel, Sophie describes the fussing and whining and crying of her daughter who was sick with an untreated ear infection prior to being forced to make the choice. It is suggested that her choice was partly influenced by her irritation at the child which makes it all the more monstrous.
Meryl Streep gives a fabulous performance as do Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol. All three are perfect for their roles. The movie is only slightly slow, but still manages to carry the viewer along. It could have been a better movie if the nuances of Sophie's choice as well as the primary themes of the book had been included. These elements would have made it stupendous instead of just excellent.
All through the book and movie, Sophie faces choices and in every instance, she chooses from a position of illusion of safety and fear, and it seems to be suggested that when she chooses, someone dies as a consequence of her choice.
For example, after her father and her husband have been taken by the Nazis (at that point, you would think that Sophie would have realized that there was no rationality to Nazism since her father and husband were supporters of the Nazis and died anyway), she has a lover, Józef, who, with his half-sister, Wanda, is a member of the Polish Resistance. They ask Sophie to translate some stolen Gestapo documents, but fearing she might get into trouble, she refuses. Two weeks later, Józef is murdered by the Gestapo. One gets the impression that if Sophie had helped, this might not have happened, but that is uncertain. It is only a short time later that Sophie is arrested and sent to Auschwitz with her children. So, again, holding back, acting out of fear for the self, trying to protect the self, is not seen to be a good choice.
When Sophie is in line at Auschwitz, she again tries to save herself and her children by telling a doctor that she is a good catholic, a supporter of the Reich, etc. Even though she is pretending to support the Nazis out of fear for herself and her children, and trying to save them, it is this act that precipitates the terrible choice. There is clearly no humanity in the Nazi mentality and that is something that Sophie never seems to grasp. She continues to think that they are normal humans, that they can be reasoned with, their consciences appealed to, when it is clear they are psychopaths and have no consciences at all. This occurs again in her interactions with camp commandant Hess. She refuses to help others by stealing a radio, and caves in to her fears again and pretends to be a Nazi supporter to try to save herself and her son.
Again and again Sophie makes the wrong choices. Finally, Sophie seems to understand that saving herself isn't worth what she has paid with the coin of her soul. She returns to the deadly embrace of her Jewish lover who, in his paranoid schizophrenia, takes both their lives.
Perhaps a prophetic lesson for our own times. It's a beautiful film, but it could have been better with very little effort.
Description of Sophie's Choice
Sophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps who has found a reason to live in Nathan a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust. They befriend Stengo the movies narrator a young American writer new to New York City. But the happiness of Sophie and Nathan is endangered by her ghosts and his obsessions. Meryl Streep won an Oscar for her performance as Sophie. System Requirements:Directed by Alan J. Pakula Writing credits Alan J. Pakula Starring Meryl Streep Kevin Kline Runtime: 151 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 012236048701 Manufacturer No: 60487On Golden Pond
Writer Ernest Thompson, who came up with the original stage play of On Golden Pond and adapted it for film, is lucky to have two giants of the screen give dignity and breadth to his sometimes trite dialogue. Henry Fonda, in his last role, plays a prickly English professor at the disagreeable age of 80. Visiting his summer house by a Maine lake with his wife (Katharine Hepburn), the old man forges an unlikely bond with a lonely boy, comes to terms with his daughter (Jane Fonda), and suffers disorienting effects of mild dementia. Even playing a tired old man, Fonda is an absolute lion of a movie star, and Hepburn brings her special spirit to the part of his worried bride. The onscreen relationship between Henry and Jane Fonda naturally makes one think about their much-discussed difficulties offscreen, but that's a side benefit in a movie that is really just a celebration of simple human decency. --Tom Keogh
Sophie's Choice
The sunny streets of Brooklyn, just after World War II. A young would-be writer named Stingo (Peter MacNicol) shares a boarding house with beautiful Polish immigrant Sophie (Meryl Streep) and her tempestuous lover, Nathan (Kevin Kline); their friendship changes his life. This adaptation of the bestselling novel by William Styron is faithful to the point of being reverential, which is not always the right way to make a film come to life. But director Alan J. Pakula (All the President's Men) provides a steady, intelligent path into the harrowing story of Sophie, whose flashback memories of the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp form the backbone of the movie. Streep's exceptional performance--flawless Polish accent and all--won her an Oscar, and effectively raised the standard for American actresses of her generation. No less impressive is Kevin Kline, in his movie debut, capturing the mercurial moods of the dangerously attractive Nathan. The two worlds of Sophie's Choice, nostalgic Brooklyn and monstrous Europe, are beautifully captured by the gifted cinematographer Néstor Almendros, whose work was Oscar-nominated but didn't win. It should have. --Robert Horton
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