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Show Park City News Thursday, January 20, 1983 Page B5 I " - . igiini(BnngM I GUIDED XC SKIING 30 minutes from Park City -. , ' r : A iiyuuateiuu If you are looking for a SAFE, WtLri HWWk outing, dlu cross-country ski We feature long or short day tours with lunch or moonlite overnight outings with informal instruction. Heel WdDrlldl by aK Rick Brough PIUTE CHECK QUTFXTTCflS, XXJC. ROUTE 1-A, KAMAS, UTAH 64036 PHONE 1733-431 7 Sophie's Choice' Film turns life into dour drama PARK CITY r - A Classic Recommended Good double-feature double-feature material Time-killer For masochists only Sophie's Choice "Sophie's Choice" has great moments in a movie that isn't great. However, it may have been a perfect choice to open the U.S. Film and Video Festival. If a film festival is supposed to set your mind stirring, then "Sophie," with its mass of emotional and intellectual nuance some failed, some powerful is a good catalyst. My main problem with the movie, I think, is that director Alan J. Pakula puts a mood of slow doleful intensity everywhere even in scenes where it doesn't belong. The picture follows the psychological and physical ordeal of Sophie (Meryl Streep) who was a Polish prisoner of the Nazis during World War II. The war scenes (in flashback) show the filmmakers at their best. At one point, Sophie, as a housemaid for the camp commandant, must humor the officer's little girl, as the youngster goes through her family album. The depiction of the girl who speaks of Cachau and Auschwitz as if they were summer camps-exposes camps-exposes the banality of evil. But the' movie also features fea-tures a ridiculous, melodramatic melo-dramatic scene in which the emaciated Sophie, now in America, haltingly tries to find a book in a library from a snooty clerk who can barely condescend to speak to her. (He seems even more callous because Sophie looks like she's at death's doorway.) door-way.) This encounter with a rude civil servant is played up like gross victimization. The movie will live, if only for the image of Meryl Streep plodding across the muddy hell of the Nazi camps. However, the movie itself also plods with hoked-up hoked-up despair. We meet Sophie through Stingo (Peter MacNichol), a young Southern writer of 1947 who moves to an apartment house in Brooklyn under the room where she lives with her lover, Nakthan Landau (Kevin Kline). In her fractured English, Sophie pronounces his name "Stinko"; and Nathan's way of making friends is to assault him with a corn-pone Rhett Butler accent. Nevertheless, Never-theless, the three become fast friends. You get the feeling the script and director are not very interested in the joy and warmth of this friendship. They're more interested in getting to the tragic parts namely the emotional-roller-coaster behavior of Nathan. One minute, Nathan is dashing, humane, and passionatehe pas-sionatehe invites your in- ' i 7C- S'-i , VS vil W -MO- - -JYs t ( ) Sophie (Meryl Streep) and Stingo (Peter MacNicol) wait to surprise Nathan. timacy then he turns monstrous, mon-strous, turning that intimacy against his friends like a sword. But this problem, which takes up nearly half the movie, rarely draws our empathy. It's a fairly predictable pre-dictable Jekyll-and-Hyde is her show. She goes through a whole lifetime showing the various stages of her ordeal. Ensconsed in Brooklyn with her broken English, she is vulnerable and slightly funny. (Is this the first role she's had that attitude most of the time, but within that he also manages to show passion, naivete, loneliness, and the undaunted un-daunted element that will make him a survivor. In his direction, Pakula seems to be trying to suggest In his direction Pakula seems to be trying to suggest a flow in life oozing and relentless that pays little mind to the characters' joy, rages or fear. act. (When Stingo and Sophie prepare a party, you know Nathan will spoil it by coming home in his "monster" "mon-ster" mood.) The Brooklyn segment never quite springs to life, and it uses some artificial devices to move the story forward. For instance, Stingo Stin-go has two nearly identical "disillusionment" scenes, (a) He finds out from a Pole the truth about Sophie's idealized father, and (b) Landau's brother reveals Nathan isn't really just a volatile intellectual. The last half of the movie concentrates on Sophie's past as a Nazi prisoner, and this segment attains the inexorable, horrible flow that director Pakula is seeking, (despite some occasional oc-casional flaws). Sophie takes the worst of both worlds. She is victimized, but feels guilty too on account of her passivity, and her desperate willingness to play up to the Nazis' prejudices. (In the camps, she is so hysterical, she begs for sympathy on the grounds that she is, after all, a Catholic and not a Jew. ) Streep is aided mightily by the skills of make-up, but even so it's clear this movie allowed a vein of humor?) And of course, she performs her specialty the monologue mono-logue on a painful past episode, recalled in tranquility. tranquil-ity. Her style in these moments is getting familiar (most recently, from "French Lieutenant's Woman" Wo-man" and "Still of the Night") but the script and direction give her enough new wrinkles to make it distinctive. Kevin Kline, as Nathan, is a fascinating performer, but maybe not in this role. Kline started out as the Pirate King in the stage "Pirates of Penzance" and no wonder! He looks like some distilled mix of Flynn, Peter O'Toole, and John Gilbert. But in contrast to his appearance, his acting (especially (es-pecially vocals) is bland, and you can't see the source of his magnetism. In his mad scenes, the script gives him choice venom to spew, and he does it capably, especially in a tirade over the phone. Peter NacNichol does an excellent job with Stingo and his thick-tongued accent. (Josef Sommer, narrating as the grown-up Stingo, complements comple-ments him nicely.) MacNichol Mac-Nichol stands in a watchful a flow in life oozing relentlessthat relent-lessthat pays little mind to the characters', joy, rages, or fear. What he gets is a picture that looks excessively excessive-ly draggy as if tragedy amounted to being languid. It takes forever for Sophie to get into a scene or out of it. A scene is shot against a mighty hallway or dusky-blue dusky-blue trees at night, and the movie-makers want you to admire it a little before they start the action. Sophie visits the Polish ghetto, and you don't notice the Jews for the back-lit halo around her head. Amid the genuinely, painful pain-ful powerful moments, in "Sophie's Choice," there are echoes of the director pushing push-ing the moment a little too far, or being a trifle obvious with the message. (We get the point when we see the Auschwitz commandant's happy little family in the kitchen. But then the script starts to hammer at things as the wife bubbles, "I'm baking Himmler's favorite cake." "Sophie's Choice" is fairly well done, but too much of it lends credence to the cliche that important film-making is slow, ponderous, and stately. mi The Cowboy Welcomes the U.S. Film Festival 1 N Tonight ED PRATT BAND Friday& Saturday NEW RIDERS OF sun.rnurs THE PURPLE SAGE SADDLE TRAMP 2 Shows 8&11 -COMING ATTRACTIONS Fri & Sat, Jan 28 & 29 JOHN BAYLEY RETURNS Wed. Feb 9 Feb. 1619 MONTANA PURE PRAIRIE LEAGUE V I ) Happy Hour 4-7 Tickets on sale at Cosmic Aeroplane, Smokey's Records, allZCMI stores, Salt Palace & Cowboy Bar Liquor Store. Join us for dinner featuring BBQ ribs, steaks and a great evening's entertainment For dinner reservations and information please call 649 4146 We specialize in banquets & parties. S3& SL Chamber Ensemble to feature music of Henry Wolking h n L7 LJ i 4 L I fi iJtJ ... On Thursday, Jan. 27 the highly-acclaimed Salt Lake Chamber Ensemble will perform per-form in the intimate atmosphere at-mosphere of Park City's Egyptian Theatre. This four-member four-member group features Erich Graf on the flute, Ricklen Nobis on the harpsichord, harp-sichord, Mitchell Morrison on the bassoon and Richard Stout on the violin. The performance will feature the work of Henry Wolking, jazz composer in residency at the University of Utah. The composer says, "Baroque music and jazz are not so far apart, the biggest difference being that in contemporary con-temporary jazz we use many more non-chord tones than the Baroque composers. I often of-ten use Bach's music as illustrations in my jazz classes. "The Suite for Baroque Ensemble was written especially for the Salt Lake Chamber Ensemble and is hased on my study of six Bach Cello Suites. The first, third and fifth movement s are more traditionally struc tured, wniie tiie second, fourth and sixth represent a more modern approach to the form of traditional Baroque music." The Salt Lake Chamber Ensemble is being sponsored by the Egyptian Theatre, KPCW the Park City Library, the Utah Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Tickets are $5.50 for mem-Ikts mem-Ikts of the sponsoring organizations and $7 general admittance. For ticket reservations cal' 49-9371. WW Park City Resort Lodging would like to offer property managers and all owners of rental units in Park City A CENTRALIZED CHECK-IN LOCATION that is easy to find (15 15 Park Avenue) and will be staffed from 8:00 a.m. - 10 00 p.m., 7 days a week. Arrivals later than 1 0:00 p.m. by prior arrangement. We can handle groups and individuals. Remember how busy we get? No more waiting for guests to arrive after normal business hours. Contact us now if you are interested. For information, call Enola Dangerfield. 80 1 -649-8082, 649-872 1 . o 49-6368. park city resort lodging P.O. Box 1846 Park City. Utah 84060 |