OSCARS '82: Sophie's Choice

“Don’t you see? We are dying.”

CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of the Holocaust, death of a child, genocide, concentration camps, Auschwitz, mental illness, antisemitism, fascism, war.

This week’s film has been seared into the collective moviegoing memory based on a single, powerful, heartbreaking scene. And yet that scene is meant solely as the culmination of what is, in all honesty, a soap opera romance. In fact, if it weren’t for some incredible acting, this movie would be pure pulp trash because it actively avoids the point at all turns. It’s strange, too, because a few simple structural changes would make this story into a near masterpiece, tying together the trauma of the past with the tragedy of the present. But instead we’re left with an incredibly well-acted mess, and a handful of incredibly powerful moments that don’t add up to a full story. We discuss Sophie’s Choice this week on Macintosh & Maud Haven’t Seen What?!

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Intro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.

Excerpt taken from “Love Theme” from the motion picture soundtrack to Sophie’s Choice. Composed by Marvin Hamlisch. © 1983 Fifth Continent Music Classics, successor in interest Southern Cross Records, Inc.

Excerpt taken from the score to the motion picture The Verdict. Composed by Johnny Mandel. © 1982 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.