Sophie's Choice Picspam
The first time I've seen Sophie's Choice was when I just turned 15. Back then I had to watch it dubbed because it was on TV. Last night I've seen it for the first time in English. It's so much better when you see it in the original version are the accents. I'm still trying to get over the Meryl Streeps German pronunciation AND being bi-lingual is awesome because subtitles really only give you a sense what is said but it's not accurate. What surprised me most is that I hardly ever notice that German has so many nuances. Moving on...
The year is 1947. Aspiring southern author Stingo (Peter MacNichol) heads to New York to seek his fortune. Moving into a dingy Brooklyn boarding house, Stingo strikes up a friendship with research chemist Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline) and Nathan's girlfriend, Polish refugee Sophie Zawistowska (Oscar-winner Meryl Streep). There is something unsettling about the relationship; Nathan is subject to violent mood swings, while Sophie seems to be harboring a horrible secret. Stingo soons learns that both Nathan and Sophie are strangers to truth. - allmovie
"The man's mad, he's brilliant." - Meryl Streep about Kevin Kline
Stingo: [voice-over] I remembered Nathan's voice that night before. "Don't you see, Sophie? We're dying". I longed desperately to escape... to pack my bags and flee. But I did not. I stayed at Yetta Zimmerman's... and I helped fulfill Sophie's prophecy about the three of us. We became the best of friends.
"People would say, 'Was it sad to make?' and I'd be chirping on and on, 'No, we had the greatest time, it was so fun!' It sounds dreaful, but we had to. In the olden days, when I had a memory, I could remember song lyrics from the first time I heard them, things like that. That's a facility - it didn't take a lot to learn the sound of the languages. I took a Berlitz course in Polish. And I read poetry out loud, in order to see what it felt like to move emotion through you in an alien way. By the time I finished, it was part of my larynx; it wasn't separate from me." - Meryl Streep, Entertainment Weekly, March 2000
Sophie: [after having taken a sip of the wine that Nathan has poured for her] Mmm. You know, when you... when you live a good life... like a saint... and then you die, that must be what they make you to drink in paradise.
Sophie: I was safe, I was in Sweden. I was in that refugee camp. I mean, that was good. They try to help you, you know? They try... but... I knew that... Christ had turned his face away from me... and that only a Jesus who no longer cared for me could... kill those people that I love, but... leave me alive... with my shame? Oh, God. So I went to that church... and I took the glass I knew was there and I... I've cut my wrist. But I didn't die, of course!
Stingo: Of course, not.
Sophie: Stingo... there's so many things you don't understand. There's so many things that I can't... that I cannot... tell you.
Stingo: I want you to trust me. I want you to trust me. Just trust me.
Sophie: Oh, God! There's Nathan!
Nathan: On this bridge on which so many great Americans writers stood and reached out for words to give America its voice looking toward the land that gave them Whitman. From its Eastern edge dreamt his country's future and gave it words. On this span of which Thomas Wolfe and Hart Crane wrote we welcome Stingo into that pantheon of the Gods whose words are all we know of immortality.
Stingo: Sophie, why did you lie to me?
Sophie: I lied because, you know why? I was so afraid. I was afraid I'd left alone! So... Good bye... my friend.
Stingo: Sophie, I want to understand. I'd love to know the truth.
Sophie: The truth? It does not make it easier to understand. And maybe you think that find out the truth about me... and you'll understand me and then you'd forgive me for all those... For all my lies.
Stingo: I promise I'll never leave you.
Sophie: You must never promise that. No one... no one should ever promise that!
Sophie: How can I explain how much I loved my father? My father believed that human perfection was a possibility. Every night I pray to God... to forgive me for always making a disappointment to my father. And I pray to him... to make worthy of such a great good man. I was a grown woman. I was wholly come of age. I was a married woman... when I realized I hated my father beyond all words to tell it. And my father was working for weeks on the speech he calls... "Poland Jewish Problem". Orderly I typed those speeches... and I don't hear the words, their meaning, but... this time I came upon a word that I have never heard it before. The solution for Poland Jewish Problem, he concludes... is "Vernichtung". Extermination. I have not meant to go to the ghetto that afternoon... but something made me go there. I stood there I don't know how long... watching these people that my father has condemned to die. All these men, these women, these children would be "Vernichtung". Extermination. I suddenly remembered that my father is waiting for that speech... and I hurry home to finish the typing but... in my rushing and my haste to finish that... I make so many mistakes in the sentences and... I run with it to the University and my father has no time... to check that before speaking. And he get up in front of all those people... and he reads the speech and makes those mistakes... and I see him getting so angry. And when it was over, he came up to me... I was with my husband, of course. And in front of him and all his colleague he said: "Zozia... your intelligence is pulp." Pulp. I didn't have any courage to say: "Yes, but what about the Jews?" The Jewish people, but... After that he didn't trust me anyway.
Nathan: Your book has wet my appetite to know about the South. And about the trip, too. Miss Sophie and I have been discussing the possibility of taking a tour to your beloved Dixie in October. And I've been thinking, if it's all right with Miss Sophie...
Stingo: Sure.
Nathan: ...that maybe we could make a wedding trip and have you join us not just as our best friend but as my best man. [to Sophie] I have the honor to request your hand in marriage. To have and to hold from this day forth till death us do part. With this ring I be true myself to you.
Sophie: My darling, will you forgive me?
Nathan: Get off that phone, you whore!
Sophie: You know that I love you.
Nathan: I don't want to speak to you again!
Stingo: Nathan, we love you very much, all right? We'd do nothing to hurt you. Now you tell us where you are.
Nathan: God damn you to hell forever for betraying me... behind my back, you whom I trust like the best friend I ever had. and that shit-eating grin of yours day after day? Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth when you gave me your manuscript to read. "Ah, gee, Nathan. Thank you so much". When not minutes earlier... you'd been in bed with the woman I was going to marry. Marry! Marry! I'd burn in hell before I'd marry a two-timing Pollack... who'd spread her legs for a Southern shit-ass betraying me like that.
Stingo: We're going to come get you. Where are you?
Nathan: Don't come. Stay where you are. I'm going to come get you. Both of you.
Letter from Sophie to Stingo: "But when I woke I was in Despair about Nathan. By that I mean so filled with guilt and thoughts of death.It was like ice flowing into my blood. So I must be with Nathan again for whatever that means."
Someone: He worked in a pharmaceutical lab. I think that's how he got a hold on the cyanide. They found it next to the bed, you know?