Review of Sophie's Choice (1982) by Amraj D — 24 Sep 2010

Unarguably one of the all-time finest female performances in a movie, the acting is superb and incredibly believable. The 'choice' scene is one of the saddest and emotion-driving scenes I have witnessed, and is executed superbly.

Having two stories shown throughout the movie, one showing Sophie's past and one showing her present, the movie feels very much like a biographical story, with the two periods in her life having similarities and differences.

This takes the movie somewhat away from Stingo who has his own problems in his life and perhaps is not explored in more depth. So, it is a little difficult to pick out exactly what is relevant in the movie as one is watching it as the three main characters all have such interesting lives, but only Sophie's is documented in enough detail and there are a lot of little plotlines that do not quite turn out to be important or are detached from other parts of the movie.

Despite this little problem, it is actually quite an enjoyable movie and the love triangle that seems to develop is an interesting one, and it always does seem that Nathan knows that Stingo is mad about Sophie and he sometimes shows this creating some tense drama.

The movie closes quite well with Stingo who is obviously going to continue to write his book which is most likely about the two friends he has just met and got to know so much about.