A boil-down of a large William Styron novel, and an intransigently literary movie. The growth of the bond between the central trio — Stingo, the aspiring young Southern novelist (and narrator of the tale); Sophie, the beautiful Polish-Catholic concentration-camp victim; Nathan, her volatile Jewish lover — is quite lifelike and involving. A couple of color-drained flashbacks to Auschwitz, which do not come up until a long ways in, make the movie seem more movielike; that is, they make it seem a different, more ordinary (not to mention longer) movie. With Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Peter MacNicol; written and directed by Alan J. Pakula. (1982) — Duncan Shepherd
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