abacus44 How did Streep ever get an Oscar for this? While her inconsistent dialogue was not her fault, her inconsistant accent was all on her. The story was plodding and boring. Instead of a 2 1/2 hour movie, this should have been a Lifetime movie of the week, running no more than 1 1/2 hours with commercials.

MartinHafer Warning: This film is about concentration camps and is VERY hard to watch at times. While I would not put it in the same emotional category as "Schindler's List", be prepared and think twice before you see the movie. It is a super-depressing picture."Sophie's Choice" is an interesting film in that the performance by Meryl Streep is truly stupendous...one of the best acting performances I've ever seen. To get this part, she learned German and Polish and THEN worked on her accents...and seemed to be great at them as well as speaking German during the flashback scenes. She also has her hair shaved and allowed herself to look just godawful in these scenes. Yet, while she is amazing, the rest of the film is good but not nearly as good. This would explain why this is an unusual case with a Best Actress award for a film that was not nominated for Best Picture. Now I am not saying the rest of the film is bad...but dwelling so much on the present day in the first half of the film seems like a bit of a mistake. The last half, with the powerful flashbacks and secrets divulged about Sophie and her incredibly volatile boyfriend (Kevin Kline) is very exciting and it left you wanting more...and left me wanting far less of the friendship portion in the first half or the ravings of the boyfriend. In fact, I wonder if it might have been better to split this into two entirely different movies. Still, with such a great performance by Streep, it's still on my list of movies to see.By the way, this is not a complaint but in the amusement park sequence near the beginning, notice how Peter MacNicol's straw hat stays on as if super glued to his head!

Dalbert Pringle In my opinion - Out of this 1982 film's decidedly over-long 2-hour & 30-minute running time, only 30 of those minutes made Sophie's Choice worth watching.These 30 minutes were the moments (told in very vivid flashbacks) when the guilt-ridden Sophie eventually recalls her experiences as a young, Polish woman, and mother, in war-torn Germany and what "choices" she was inevitably forced to make.It took this film 85 minutes of pure drudgery before Sophie finally got around to telling her harrowing story about "choice".To say that this movie was marred beyond belief by Kevin Kline's absolutely annoying, over-the-top portrayal of the Nathan Landau character would truly be an understatement. Kline was an ultimate ass in this picture. Needless to say, I hated him, like you wouldn't believe.As well - Drab, dull actor Peter MacNicol was utterly forgettable as the Stingo character who befriends Sophie and learns of her deep, dark secret.And, finally - I thought Meryl Streep speaking broken-English with a Polish accent was pretty disappointing. Half the time I couldn't understand what the hell she was saying.All-in-all - I do not recommend this movie at all. It is far too over-rated, if you ask me.

powermandan When you look at 1982 in film, you will see things like Star Trek II, Fast Times At Ridgemeont High, ET, Blade Runner, Tootsie and Gandhi. Sophie's Choice is the most underrated as well as the best. Gandhi may have won nearly every major award and ET may be the most beloved, but this tops both films. ET's only massive strong point is the ending which the movie builds up to, Sophie's Choice also builds but has vast strength from everything that comes out. Gandhi is pretty much the inferior version of Lawrence of Arabia, massively dragged out. There is not one dull moment in Sophie's Choice. It is worth seeing why this is not a dull 150 minute movie.Peter MacNicol plays a young writer, known as Stingo, who moves into a duplex in New York and hits it off with his neighbours, Sophie and Nathan (Streep, Kline) right away. As Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan, winning their trust, he can tell that they are harbouring deep secrets that will change him forever. Peter MacNicol and Kevin Kline are extremely underrated actors. Both of them are extraordinary. Then there's Meryl Streep who gives the best acting performance in film history by a female. A few years ago when I saw American History X, Edward Norton's performance in it became the best I had ever seen. I said nobody, male or female, could top this. Then I saw Sophie's Choice. Does Meryl Streep do a better job of acting than Edward Norton? I don't know, tough to say. But I do know that Norton is the best male performance and Streep is the best female performance. She is the main character who's background gets dived into the most. We see her experience in war and her choice. They are haunting and you will never forget what they do to you.