Amazon.com Essentials:
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
