Ethan Hawke, Cate Blanchett, Claire Danes, Holland Taylor and Sarita Choudhury attended the Museum of Modern Art to honor an acting legend.
It was the fortieth anniversary of Sophie’s Choice, the movie that helped launch Meryl Streep into Major stardom.
It was a role that she campaigned for, learned to speak note-perfect German and Polish for and, somehow, managed to completely transform into another person for0–a refugee who can’t escape the horrors of the Holocaust even as she tries to establish a new life for herself in Brooklyn.
Sophie’s Choice’s Most Powerful Scene
“We’re the only ones still standing,” Streep noted, gesturint to Kline and MacNicol. “The visionaries who birthed ‘Sophie’s Choice’ are not.”
Pakula, who died in a car accident in 1998, urged his young cast to give their best work in every scene that they performed. “Something he always said was, ‘deny me none of your riches,'” MacNicol remembered. “Well, I hope we did him justice and you.”
MacNicol also shared how Almendros’ eyesight had deteriorated to the point where he wore “Coke bottle” thick glasses and was legally blind. And yet, MacNicol said, he never lost his “real eye for be
“It is as relevant as ever if you look at the themes that are woven through it, both in the novel and the film, of societal and moral complacency, of complicity and self-preservation and the ever-persistent, enduring presence of absolute, pure evil in the world,” Kline said, before adding, “So, enjoy!”
After the screening, the A-list crowd, some still visibly moved by the tragic story, re-assembled at the Baccarat Hotel for cocktails.
The evening also marked the post-pandemic return of Alan Pepe Communications’ retrospective screening events.
