SOPHIE'S CHOICE (1982)

Ira says

There are 2 things I am absolutely sure of. Hollywood can never make enough films about the Holocaust. (I don’t say this for any biased sentiment or reason, I just find that period in human history extremely complex and extremely important to the history of civilization). And Meryl Streep is the finest working actor in Hollywood. What a performance. Sophie’s Choice is a film my parents have told me about since as far back as I can remember and watching it now, I see why. This isn’t just a holocaust movie, it isn’t just a film about the atrocities of a group of people against another group, about a survivor of pain or suffering, the aftermath of war and the ups and downs of a cross cultural love story, it is more astoundingly and powerfully a film about 3 characters, their relationships and the endless mysteries, complexities, ugliness and depth of human nature.

Pakula, (Klute, All the Presidents Men, The Pelican Brief), a director who excels in the conspiracy thriller tradition as much as he does in the exploration of the human psyche brings us a moving, stirring, deeply affecting drama with three stand out performances from Streep, Klein and MacNicol.

Streep’s first two scenes in the film; the violent, memorable argument ending with her collapsed on the staircase outside her apartment and her first real speaking scene at the doorway of her Stingo’s flat, shot in a beautifully lit, soft focus mid shot, both give you goose-bumps. In the first we barely see her, as she sits in the background of a long shot, dressed in white with half bare legs, hiding her face and sobbing, she mutters apologies and that astonishingly perfected Polish accent hits you like a bolt of thespian-prowess-lightning. The next time, transformed, a beautiful ethereal creature, creamy white skin, tray in hand, piercing eyes she’s sweetly offering her neighbor some dinner. In two short scenes, the fine actress reveals layers of her character a lesser performer may have never been able to do. Sophie’s inherent flair for drama, her warmth, gentleness, pain, fragility, deep emotional disturbance and underlying strength come through with conviction in the opening image and that single interaction with MacNicol. And as she leaves the food and turns to climb the stairs back up to her apartment , her final words linger with a haunting subtext, “Stingo, it has a friendly, happy sound. I like it.”

Friendly and happy. As much as the film looks so on the surface, Sophie’s Choice is almost constantly full of dark mystery and is often unfriendly and unhappy. I loved the way Pakula marks the beginning of the 3 characters’ friendship, starting with a flamboyant but somewhat unnaturally swift letter of invitation from Sophie and Nathan to their new found southern ‘baby’ , the to be ‘Bard of Brooklyn’ when he first arrives in New York to the doorstep of their bright pink building. To that triumphant, lyrical, happy montage sequence at the fun fair in Coney islands where everything looks exciting, normal, joyous on the surface, but things are as unaligned, as much in disarray as those elongated, weird looking figures are of the actors reflecting off the distorting mirrors. Those mirrors were a huge symbolic image early on in the film for me and even while the three grow to be the ‘best of friends’, you always know this is the point of view of STINGO speaking, the same idealistic, innocent, impressionable, lovable, understanding STINGO who comes to a ‘strange place like Brooklyn’ to embark on a ‘voyage of discovery’ and stumbles into much murkier territory.

Pakula’s screenplay, rich, dense, and intelligent is masterful in how it withholds information and replaces it with subtext , hinting at deeper meanings throughout. I loved the use of the voiceover as the young, naïve writers narration glossses everything over with a lyrical, eloquent quality, that almost feels unreal. As the plot moves between the present day friendship, the love, drama and everyday normalcy of this odd triangle of people to flashbacks of the holocaust, the concentration camps and the horror at Auschwitz, Pakula really manages to take us between different spaces and worlds.

I liked how he uses warm textures, bright colours, lively music and a quicker pace for the former, and a minimalist, grey landscape for the latter, making these sections stark, stripped of colour, crisper of dialogue, and harsher in tone and mood. And yet the film always feels a bit romanticized in the present. It’s not a sentimental, mushy, annoying sort of romanticism, because it’s an escape from something so horrendous. The film keeps asking you to come back to the present, to forget, to bury, to cover up, to LIE about that past. Lies. Redemption. Music. Poetry. Literature. Champagne on the Hudson. It’s all so satiating and wonderful. And it all comes bundled in the guise of love. An idea that Pakula and his actors take and wrench of all its juiciness and lay bare.

Klein is fantastic as NATHAN, at once giddy, generous, funny, glamorous, a great friend and fervent lover and yet aggressive, violent, and wholly unstable. Sophie is his redemption, his rescued, fragile little child whom he welcomes with Emily Dickenson and open arms. There is a slow lingering mood in the flashback scene where their courtship begins to turn into something more meaningful. He has just saved her life and has been nursing her tenderly. The point of view has disappeared from Stingo to the camera and Pakula stays on them for a long time with a stationery camera, in a long shot and a long take as they move from familiarity to comfort lying on a bed. And even when the camera begins to zoom in ever so slightly, and NATHAN begins to read aloud to her, music begins to drown the image out, underlining what will clearly be a doomed affair. Alluding also to a later final image of them similarly in a bed with their destiny written out plainly.

While Nathan is an intriguing character and the force of insatiable energy in the film, it is Sophie who to me is the richer and more captivating. Streep is just brilliant as she transforms from a swan like, flowy beauty to a blood drained, pale weakling, to a hardened camp survivor to a wiser, but passionate older woman. As volatile, tempestuous, and clearly passionate the relationship she has with Klein gets, not for a second do the two actors ever stop making you believe that this is a couple that is deeply, madly in love, that they are in every sense of the word ‘crazy’ about one another. Theirs is a heartfelt romance, and a real love as much as it is a desperate attempt to cling to an illusion of perfect bliss. Its almost as if Pakula lingers with them in moments of silence after a heated argument, or when they first meet, or as they lie together at the end of the film to constantly remind us of that and of the fact that Stingo is always watching. It’s through his eyes that the camera catches them escaping into their own very private world together at different moments in the film. But Stingo has an illusion too. And one that will shatter in the most potent and the most unforgettable of ways. It first begins to do so when Sophie admits she lied about her father, a ‘Jew hater’. Streep’s face recounting that section of her story to Stingo about an hour into the film is one of the most memorable images for me from any film I’ve ever seen and one of the few close-ups Pakula uses so sparingly in the film. But it is the casual, unexpected, almost expressionless revelation of that ‘choice’ towards the final curtain call of the film that really hits you. It may somehow uncomfortably justify the end, or explain it, or make it easier to understand. But one things for sure, it, along with Streep’s performance in the film, will never leave you.

Neha says

SOPHIE’S CHOICE is a film that lingers with you for a long while after its end credits roll. The simplicity and stillness with which Alan J. Pakula directs his actors and guides his narrative, pealing off the layers of a very complex human story, surprising us with character insights and revelations not to shock or provide a dramatic twist to the tale but to enlighten had me riveted each step of the way. The characters are not just rich and multi-dimensional but each one of them-Sophie, Nathan and Stingo come with such a dynamic thrust of duality and yet there is an honesty about them that makes it hard to judge, condone or support their deeds or acts of compulsion. One must simply marvel at how William Styron’s character driven novel has found such a powerful voice on film as well.

Early on in the film when aspiring writer Stingo played by Mr. MacNicol shifts into a Brooklyn boarding house and meets Sophie played by Meryl Streep, we see Sophie surreptitiously covering the German concentration camp engraving on her arm-little do we know what a brutal story we are in for that does equal justice to all those wonderful moments of joie de vivre that cement the delicate and nurturing friendship between Sophie, Stingo and her “glamorous” boyfriend Nathan played by Kevin Kline and to all those hard hitting sequences in the film that account for Sophie’s devastating, life altering times at a concentration camp where a certain “choice” gave her invisible but defining scars, clouding her life in secrecy that holds tremendous intrigue for Stingo just like it does for us.

But none of it feels invasive or in your face or even like a post world war 2 commentary. Pakula uses extreme close-ups to sublime effect, steps back and allows Sophie’s story to find its own voice as her long drawn out conversations with Stingo, with its various tones of truth and deception truly transport us back in time and into her tormented psyche. Seamless flashbacks that particularly take on gritty black and white hues for the concentration camp scenes are dramatically captured in long shots and still make you feel so claustrophobic.

Meryl Streep has been photographed beautifully. Very rarely is one so bewitched by such delicate beauty that has a penetrating resilience and voluptuousness to go with it; by a face that in extreme close-up shows both a silent pain and a more apparent passion for life. Streep doesn’t just become Sophie, she embodies her-from her graceful and sensual body language to her stilted Polish accent to her affecting performance-Streep’s choice to do Sophie’s Choice was probably an ambitious one even for an actress of her calibre at the time and guess what? Nor could the Academy resist acknowledging her efforts for this one.

As for her supporting heroes, Kevin Kline convincingly portrays his passion and lust for Sophie as her lover and equally rattling is his ire so much so that each time he enters a scene one simply can’t measure his state of mind and that keeps us instinctively on our toes. As for Dr. MacNicol, he plays Stingo who’s more of a silent observer and listener. For the most part there is such an ambiguity around his attraction for his neighbors. Is he seduced by Sophie’s beauty or is the writer in him intrigued by her story? There is also a homo-erotic bent to his affections for Nathan. But be that as it may Dr. MacNicol plays each shade with compassion and a measured intensity.

Dramatic, suspenseful and disturbing- Sophie’s Choice is a compelling human tragedy that soars with its power pact performances and keen direction. If you want to see Meryl Streep in her finest hour –Sophie’s Choice must be your top choice.

GOODFELLAS (1990)

Neha says

“As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster” - so says Henry Hill, our anti hero played with ferocious commitment by the ever intense Ray Liotta who in my books plays a character of a lifetime. It helps that it’s based on a true story and Henry Hill is the notorious “Wiseguy” gangster whose life and times have been well documented by crime reporter Nick Pileggi in a novel before he collaborated with Scorsese to pen the film version.

Following the life of Henry Hill we flash back into his early days as a delivery boy for the mob but then he meets and befriends Jimmy played with understated flair by Robert De Niro and as is revealed through Hill’s always penetrating voice-over-Jimmy’s the kind of guy who “roots for the bad guy in the movies.” (And has one of the best character introduction sequences we’ve seen) But of course he’d back the likes of psychopath Tommy played by Joe Pesci whose another startling revelation of the film-He’s as brutal as he is funny (but don’t ever make the mistake of calling him that unless you genuinely believe he’s funny and not in the clown sort of way.)

The story of these three friends follows an intoxicating yet tragic curve-as they are first united by ambition, greed, drugs, rock n’roll, violence and crime and just as Hill gets seduced by the power, glamour and the gamble of the mafia world so do we and so does his wife Karen played with pinching honesty by Lorraine Bracco. It’s interesting how Scorsese adds her voice-over to the film, making her almost an outside eye to the world she’s now a part of. Before we know it the high’s and the illusions come shattering down as Scorsese begins to deconstruct it, starts to question the moral compass even within the mafia world and simply grips us with the dark reality of betrayal, distrust, greed, survival and self-serving agenda’s of friendships and alliances made in the Italian/American mafia reign of the sixties/seventies.

In this character driven drama- it’s about the big story-the rise and fall of Mafia life but it’s really about the small, subtle details as well. No matter how life threatening the situation, these guys still have time for food-the stirring of the tomato sauce for the evening pasta dinner is right up there in their list of priorities and the meticulous preparation of food becomes an equally dynamic aspect of the gang’s life in prison as well. Play of voiceovers and freeze frames aside, there’s also one long uncut scene that follows Henry and Karen through the back doors of a club Copacabana, through the corridors and kitchen to the main room where the waiter guides them to their seat and Henry manages to even talk to a colleague before he takes his place. Karen asks him about why he gave the guy some money before the focus shifts to the stand up routine by Henry Youngman and that’s when Scorsese finally decides to say “Cut”. It’s exciting, hypnotic and kinetic which pretty much sums up the tone and overall experience of Goodfellas.

While there are umpteen quotable one-liners (“What am I, a schmuck on wheels?” “What do you do for a living? I’m in construction.”) and some light hearted moments as well, there’s always a dark sense of foreboding looming in the background. While the “awe” in Hill’s voice-over’s sucks you into the world of the glamorous underbelly, there’s always an unwavering realism and the “true story” factor that makes things feel more plausible and closer to home. Think of a Godfather in the suburban streets of New York.! Scorsese’s astute eye, the attention to detail, the original story, the power packed performances and a truly memorable ensemble of characters makes this no ordinary gangster flick-in fact it’s extraordinary in the way in which it influences, surprises, engages, entertains, inverts the grammar of film making and holds your attention for it’s two hours and thirty minutes of crime, thrills and drama..

Ira says

Goodfellas. Wiseguys. Goodfellas. Glo-rrious. Goodfellas. Gangsters. Criminals. Thieves. Animali. Italian. Mafia. Mafia. Mafia. Words, circle around in my head, punching out at me. Punching with the unmistakable, untouchable machismo and constant droning intensity of Ray Liotta’s voice. Words that hit me quite like the film GOOD FELLAS does with its loaded title, its loaded guns, loaded pockets, loaded performances and loaded emotion.

Watching it for the second time in years, it happened all over again. Like a punch, right in my stomach. Whooosh. Boom, bang. I feel like Joe Pesci, the funny guy, the frightening guy, the guy telling his Italian brothers, all those Pete’s and Paul’s about how he was bashed up by a cop. The guy who uses an expletive in every sentence he speaks and the guy who won best supporting actor at the Oscars for his portrayal of the tiny, and most violent gangster of them all, TOMMY.
EScorsese’s preoccupation, obsession rather with themes of Italian identity, faith in god, Catholicism, masculinity & violence seethe beneath every frame of GOODFELLAS, and I say seethe, because the man is a master of tension. And tension, bubbling, boiling and constant is what he creates in this one from start to finish. Sure, Goodfellas is the shocking saga and true story of the biggest heist in American history, but it’s also a great film taking us into the fabric of the lives of the men who masterminded it. Not just Maurie the wig maker, but ALL of them. The system, the organization, the famiglia.

As the opening sequence bathed in the red from a cars headlights, cuts to a long sequence of flashbacks, Scorsese bombards us with chapter 1 without wasting any time, and in the first 20 minutes you see young Henry (LIOTTA), choosing and infiltrating his way into a life of crime. There is a celebratory, buoyant energy in the fast pace, the crowded frames, the energetic, steady, strong voiceover and the often drowning, upbeat music in the background. And there is something jolting about how casually Henry recalls, “ I was living in a fantasy”. Because you almost join him for the ride. In fact, what’s worse is that you almost BELIEVE that ride. You almost think you’ve ‘met the world’, you almost re-imagine the human moral code you have learnt, known and lived by. Almost. And therein lies the beauty. As much as he sweeps you in, as firm, strong and omnipresent as the fantastic German cinematographer Balhaus’s camera work is, as gruesome, gritty and un-watchable this one gets in parts, Scorsese takes you into it with an illusion of grandeur, an illusion of what’s ‘ok’, (so that you almost agree that the only 2 rules in life are ‘never tell on your friends’ and ‘always keep your mouth shut’).

Through vibrant music, the searing irony of the title, Liota’s delusion of perfection, Scorsese strips down the high life of crime to shock, shake and scandalize you with its ugliness and shocking immunity. And the deliberate flair with which he sets it up tells you that somewhere, somehow, betrayal, backstabbing, blood is around the next corner, that this is all too good to be true. Each time the fantasy and camaraderie breaks with the sight of a corpse, a hand with a gun, a close-up of cocaine, you are forced to remember, this isn’t the real world. This is a dream. A dirty, nasty, underworld, illegal, dream.

Here’s some frightening food for thought: Godfather. Amongst my favourite films of all time. Sopranos. Amongst my favourite TV shows of all time. Italy, one of my favourite countries in the world. Italian, one of my favourite cuisines. I suck in a deep breath, was I Italian in my last life, do I just like Coppola and Scorsese, or De Niro and Brando, or do I take some vicarious pleasure in watching those who live on the wrong side of the law? ((No, psychology, I don’t particularly want an answer). I know the answers are a combination of some of these and a function of the fact that some of favourite directors and actors have done these films but then I have to question, haven’t we all got some strange thrills by doing something forbidden in our lives? Isn’t that one of those covert human follies nobody ever talks about. Isn’t that slicing through to the very fundamental ideas of morality, redemption, good and evil.

At the movies, where glamour & crime are the greatest playgrounds for high drama, the MAFIA has been a fascinating subject. Here’s a world where people can and do, get away with murder. But it’s also a world that’s real, and unsettling. And that’s exactly what a director like Scorsese would be interested in and what he wants it to be. A montage of Bracco as she enters the famiglia, as she recounts how ‘normal’ it was for everyone to be called the same names, to spend all their time together or the prison episode where prison is about wine, scotch and good food for these dons, who basically own the system reiterates these ideas.

To me, somehow, GOODFELLAS seems Scorsese’s most finished work, his most personal, and his most passionate. From the sharpness of the writing and the scope of the dense screenplay, from his attention to detail in every aspect of filmmaking to the wonderful production values. Notice how the costumes, music, and the settings are not only tinged with careful authenticity over the 3 decades the film spans, but also aesthetically well balanced. From the way he uses fast cuts and long tracking shots, to the way he plays with colours, light and moods, from the way he provides 150 minutes of entertainment and thought provoking cinema to the way he gives it all a very firm, very strong, very masculine and very ITALIAN energy.

And above all, for his superb casting. The MEN make the film. And in this case the one woman too. His casting is excellent all around from the biggest leads to the smallest character parts for both men and women. From heavyweights like De Niro or Liotta to Pesci, Paul Sorvino, Tommy’s mom, Henry’s babysitter to the very memorable LORRAINE BRACCO as KAREN HILL, Henry’s one and only, rock and life partner. Performances bring this story alive with an aggressive realism, a focused intensity and an astounding conviction. You grow to empathize, hate, love, and feel for them all. Despite the yelling, the abuses, the drama and the immorality, the gruesome acts, the sense of the indignation and horror at how the world we know turns upside down and is run by criminals, ultimately you gasp, you squirm, shake your head in disbelief, even crack that occasional smile because whether you like it or not, you find finally, that you care, quite a great deal in fact, about that world and the people who live in it. And that, my friends is good moviemaking.