Oct 1, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min · 11 segments
Kicking off an unhinged October with this pairing from the depths of my brain. Two movies about paying for parents' sins while everyone else tries to tell your story for you — it's Sophie's Choice vs…
Sophie's the survivor of Nazi concentration camps who has found a reason to live with Nathan, a sparkling, if unsteady, American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust.
I am really shocked by that Rotten Tomatoes score, that it's not higher, because elements of the film that frustrated me, that would lead me to maybe leave a bad review, also did mimic what Sophie went through.
So my more generous interpretation of the film is that we were meant to feel the, the way that I felt about this movie, which is frustrated by those moments of levity once we know the true horror that lies in the depths of Sophie's story.
Frustrated by the men's focus on things that don't matter as Sophie tries to distract from, from going through things that no human should ever have to experience.
The lurid sort of Great Gatsby-ish nature of the three main characters gallivanting about town interspersed with flashbacks of the Holocaust is absolutely like a reflection, whether intended or not, of how we try to move on from the worst moments of our history.
So I had to do a lot of analysis on this film of, like, what do I think they were actually meaning to get across? And hopefully we landed on some of the same conclusions, or this will make you look at the film differently.
Sophie's Choice falls into that category of Citizen Kane for me as movies that we sort of joke about that are in our cultural lexicon, while the movie's plot and meaning have really slipped away.
You know, Citizen Kane, Sophie's Choice, it's like if somebody really pushed you, do you know more about Citizen Kane than Rosebud? Sophie's Choice, you know the choice, and I have absolutely used that reference of Sophie's Choice to talk about a hard decision, having never seen the film.
But in my continued quest to educate myself on the classics, the movies that have either shaped filmmaking or shaped an actor's career, I watched this movie for the first time, and it was nothing like what I thought.
It's not pleasant, but I think this movie is quite a bit more accessible than I anticipated it being.
It bridges a gap between those who have, have faced the unimaginable horrors of a concentration camp and those who heard about it secondhand.
And I love that we see, we see Sophie's stories about what happened, but initially filtered through what she is able to tell others before her real experience is revealed.
That's, like, a core element of this that I found so fascinating and that I drew from for the comparison with Scream.
I did learn we use the expression Sophie's Choice the wrong way, and I've been telling everyone ever since seeing the movie.
Guess what? Did you know you're not using Sophie's Choice correctly? But okay, Sophie's Choice.
A, Sophie's Choice, for you to categorize it as a choice, it is not a laboriously hard one that we agonize over, like, "What am I gonna do?" Going back and forth between options before probably settling on the lesser of two evils.
It is one made quickly, one that has to be made, and the horror of the choice is experienced afterwards in reflection.
Sophie's the survivor of Nazi concentration camps who has found a reason to live with Nathan, a sparkling, if unsteady, American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust.
I am really shocked by that Rotten Tomatoes score, that it's not higher, because elements of the film that frustrated me, that would lead me to maybe leave a bad review, also did mimic what Sophie went through.
So my more generous interpretation of the film is that we were meant to feel the, the way that I felt about this movie, which is frustrated by those moments of levity once we know the true horror that lies in the depths of Sophie's story.
Frustrated by the men's focus on things that don't matter as Sophie tries to distract from, from going through things that no human should ever have to experience.
The lurid sort of Great Gatsby-ish nature of the three main characters gallivanting about town interspersed with flashbacks of the Holocaust is absolutely like a reflection, whether intended or not, of how we try to move on from the worst moments of our history.
So I had to do a lot of analysis on this film of, like, what do I think they were actually meaning to get across? And hopefully we landed on some of the same conclusions, or this will make you look at the film differently.
Sophie's Choice falls into that category of Citizen Kane for me as movies that we sort of joke about that are in our cultural lexicon, while the movie's plot and meaning have really slipped away.
You know, Citizen Kane, Sophie's Choice, it's like if somebody really pushed you, do you know more about Citizen Kane than Rosebud? Sophie's Choice, you know the choice, and I have absolutely used that reference of Sophie's Choice to talk about a hard decision, having never seen the film.
But in my continued quest to educate myself on the classics, the movies that have either shaped filmmaking or shaped an actor's career, I watched this movie for the first time, and it was nothing like what I thought.
It's not pleasant, but I think this movie is quite a bit more accessible than I anticipated it being.
It bridges a gap between those who have, have faced the unimaginable horrors of a concentration camp and those who heard about it secondhand.
And I love that we see, we see Sophie's stories about what happened, but initially filtered through what she is able to tell others before her real experience is revealed.
That's, like, a core element of this that I found so fascinating and that I drew from for the comparison with Scream.
I did learn we use the expression Sophie's Choice the wrong way, and I've been telling everyone ever since seeing the movie.
Guess what? Did you know you're not using Sophie's Choice correctly? But okay, Sophie's Choice.
A, Sophie's Choice, for you to categorize it as a choice, it is not a laboriously hard one that we agonize over, like, "What am I gonna do?" Going back and forth between options before probably settling on the lesser of two evils.
It is one made quickly, one that has to be made, and the horror of the choice is experienced afterwards in reflection.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
