I really don't have much to say about Sophie's Choice other than I finished it, but I'll make something up.
This movie reminded me of two things - The Great Gatsby and Romeo and Juliet. We had to read Fitzgerald's classic 'Lost Generation' novel the summer before junior year. I remember finishing it and saying "wait what? Did that just happen? That sucked." It's a beautiful book, but wow it's tragic. And, we as readers, are along for the ride. The book is on autopilot, all the characters do is react. There is very little thinking or active participation on the part of the players. All the events seem to be predetermined. Now this could be viewed as really sloppy on the part of the writer, but Fitzgerald pulls it off. He's spent enough pages of narrative pouring life into his characters that even the fucked up journey they end up on is believable. Sophie's Choice is the same way. In my opinion, it was more the work of the acting than the writing, but the characters work for where they end up. And now that I think of it, the characters kind of run parallel too. Stingo (played by Peter MacNicol) is Nick Carraway, while Nathan and Sophie (Kevin Klien and Meryl Streep) are Gatsby and Daisy, their emotional issues and past experiences make up Tom and the rest of the characters. Kind of a stretch, but it sort of works. That's interesting.
And Romeo and Juliet, not because of the love story, though I guess there are similarities. Every time I see Romeo and Juliet, and this is the genius of Shakespeare, I have to remind myself of the end. I want them to make it. I want Juliet to wake up in time to stop Romeo from stabbing himself, even through I know the ending. Sorry about the spoilers there, but really, if you don't know the plot of Romeo and Juliet, you need to get out more. Sophie's Choice is doomed from the first moments, we all know it. But I'm still rooting for a happy ending. That's why it was so hard to watch, it's so painful. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
That doesn't mean it shouldn't been seen. This movie is incredible.
For me, it wasn't incredible until close to the end. Sophie finally starts talking about her choice, I don't want to give it away. The look on her face... There's so much raw pain in that look, it was hard to watch. Meryl won an Oscar for this one, she deserved it. And not just for the Polish accent.
I went to go see Gonzo: The Life and Works of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson with my parents tonight. It's an interesting film, I liked how much time they spent on his writing techniques and styles. And Johnny Depp narrates. After the movie we walked outside and saw this giant parade making its way down the sidewalk. They were all following a rather ragamuffin brass marching band who were later identified as being from Rhode Island. We followed them for about a block and I stopped with a group of people I'd never met before.
"What are they doing?" a girl wearing a Michigan t-shirt asked me. I explained what someone else in the crowd had told me. "Oh," she grinned at me. The band stopped and a member attempted to shout directions to their show over the noise of traffic.
"I don't know if you know sir," another girl next to me called. "But you have a monkey on your face." And sure enough, the guy playing the snare set was wearing a gorilla mask. She turned to me. "Do you have any glue?"
I stared in horror.
"For my shoe," she said and showed me where the heel was coming off. "I've been walking weird all night. People keep asking if I'm drunk. No, my shoe's just broken."
"Oh," I said, quite relieved she wasn't asking me for strange drugs I'd only heard of in a documentary about children in Bagdad. "No, no glue. Sorry."
I'm three minutes into Silkwood and all I can say is whoever did Meryl Streep's hair should probably go cry in a corner.
No comments:
Post a Comment