Pros: Meryl Streep delivers a brilliant performance as Holocaust survivor, Sophie. She's starting to live again in America, dating the charming Nathan (Kevin Kline) and befriending the fledging writer, Stingo (Peter MacNichol), but her past is never far behind, continuing to haunt her every second of every day. She fully deserved her Oscar for her astounding performance. Her accent is authentic and the mechanics of the film are great, including the numbers seemingly lifted directly from a Charlie Chaplin film.
Cons: Despite the brilliance of her performance, I found the film to be well, flat. Nathan is mentally ill which explains his bizarre mood swings and why he's convinced that Sophie is cheating on him. While that was a horrible plot twist, the far bigger one is that Sophie's past is quite different than anticipated. Her father was rounded up by mistake as was her never-on-screen husband. She's arrested for having a lover working for the resistance but her children, while they mean everything aren't even mentioned until she refuses to help the resistance as she doesn't want to endanger them. The climax scene is toward the very end and while dramatic and tragic, it is only one scene with Sophie barely having time to think about which child to save. However, she does make several other choices throughout the course of the film, including the one at the very end when she picks Nathan over Stingo.
Recommend: Maybe
Grade: B+
Side Notes:
-We never find out what happened to Sophie's son. We can only hope he survived.
-We don't know how Sophie was liberated (though history tells us it was the Russian troops) nor, more importantly, how she got to America.
-Sophie's job in America is also unclear though it appears she's some sort of Professor's assistant.
-Who knows where Stingo gets his money to afford the room in the boarding house but more importantly, we never learn his real name.
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