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Holistic Guidance - Sophie's Choice
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List Price: $9.98
Our Price: $6.99
Your Save: $ 2.99 ( 30% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Lions Gate
Starring: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol, Rita Karin, Stephen D. Newman
Directed By: Alan J. Pakula
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: LION'S GATE ENTERTAINMENT
EAN: 9780784011713
Format: Color
ISBN: 0784011710
Label: Lions Gate
Manufacturer: Lions Gate
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Publisher: Lions Gate
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 1998-04-21
Running Time: 150
Studio: Lions Gate
Theatrical Release Date: 1982-12-08
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Editorial Reviews:
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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:Â DRAMA Rating:Â R UPC:Â 012236048701 Manufacturer No:Â 60487
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent filmmaking
Comment: This was my first time viewing the film-even though I knew going in what Sophie's choice was. (It's not like movie goers keep secrets) and I have to say this is an excellent character study film. Meryl Streep definitely earned her Oscar with this one. Amazing she could sound native on just a three month emerge study. Sophie's story is heart breaking. An A+++ script, wonderful direction. A definite classic.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: I would utterly recommend seeing this movie after you have read the masterpiece on which it is based upon!!
Comment: Sophie's Choice
Having read the title Sophie's Choice, by William Styron, on which this movie is based upon and which is my favorite book of all the ones I have read until the present moment, because of its fantastic and extraordinary prose and drama plot, I just have to say that the movie does astonishingly depict the abovementioned literary work.
I am always very cautious about watching a movie based upon a literary work (particularly such a first-rate one) since it usually does not give merit to the primary source, however, this time, I was astoundingly well impressed. Meryl Streep, as the fair, Arial featured polish woman Sophie Zawistowska, portrays excellently the drama of a woman that was and survived the Nazi's concentration camps, and for one reason or another, had the luck to come out alive and ends up living, in 1947, in New York inside her own understandable private hell. A nightmare she shares with Nathan, her lover- Kevin Kline- and their writer friend Stingo- Peter MacNicol-. Their lives are entirely full of lies and, as the drama goes on, these falsehoods begin to unravel until the ending, when Sophie conveys her most hideous choice.
Steep's actuation or performance is outstanding, brilliant and beautiful, and it won her an Academy Award.
I would utterly recommend seeing this movie after you have read the masterpiece on which is based upon. It is well worth the read!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A film you will never forget
Comment: Quite simply, Sophie's Choice remains, for me, the most unforgettable Nazi concentration-camp movies ever made. In fact, because it is not ENTIRELY set during WWII, it has the Shakespearean "comic relief" that the Bard included to break the tragedy long enough to let the viewer "catch their breath".
And, of course, this is truly needed to offset and heighten the ultimate tragedy. A MUST for ANY serious film collector.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Film, but...
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointed!
Comment: The only good thing about this movie was Meryl Streep (who deserves 5 stars). I was looking forward watching this movie (when I got it) but I was very disappointed!
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