:
Meryl Streep,
Meryl Streep,
Kevin Kline,
more...
:
Alan J. Pakula,
Alan J. Pakula
see all cast/crew...
: 
: Live/Artisan
: Drama, Foreign, Romance, Costume Drama/Period Piece, Germany, Weepies
: 150 min.
: English
: Spanish
see additional details...
|
|
The year is 1947. Aspiring southern author Stingo (Peter MacNichol) heads to New York to seek his fortune. Moving into a dingy Brooklyn boarding house, Stingo strikes up a friendship with research chemist Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline) and Nathan's girlfriend, Polish refugee Sophie Zawistowska (Oscar-winner Meryl Streep). There is something unsettling about the relationship; Nathan is subject to violent mood swings, while Sophie seems to be harboring a horrible secret. Stingo soons learns that both Nathan and Sophie are strangers to truth; the audience is likewise led down several garden paths by a series of sepia-toned flashbacks, depicting Sophie's ordeal in a wartime concentration camp. The scene in which we discover the facts behind Sophie's "choice" is a gut-wrenching one; it might have been even more powerful had not the film taken so long to get there. It is betraying nothing to reveal that the character of Stingo is the alter ego of William Styron, upon whose best-selling novel the film was based. The film is rated R, due in great part to a disposable scene wherein Stingo tries to put the make on a "liberated" female intellectual. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
|
| Streep Is Astounding!
by LJSosa
June 1, 2003 - 5:47 PM PDT
|
|
|
6 out of 6 members found this review helpful
|
I saw this movie 20 odd years ago when it was first released and watched it for the second time last week. I was stunned by Meryl Streep's performance. She's incandescant. She is so completely absorbed in the role that she becomes Sophie. This kind of performance is rarely seen. Sally Fields in Norma Ray and Hillary Swank in Boys Don't Cry are others.
While occasionally it slips into hokey sentamentality, the film as a whole is wonderful and the cast around Streep are top notch. |
|
|
GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 7.46)
69 Votes
add to list 
|
|
|
Your cart
sps8146
Misshaped
© 2006 All Media Guide, LLC. Portions of content provided by All Movie Guide®,
a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.