The 70-year-old Meryl Streep was praised for "acting enough to support a world", but off the set she was low-key like a vegetarian, and she had never had a scandal in more than 40 years. Aunt Mei's brilliance has only bloomed on the big screen.
Aunt Mei has won 21 Oscar nominations, including 17 female nominations and 4 female supporting nominations, but she has only been crowned twice oscars and won one best supporting actress, and the award rate is a bit low.
Aunt May's first Oscar crown was won by her in 1983 for Sophie's Choice, when she was 34 years old.
Aunt May's second Oscar winner was in 2012, when she successfully played Margaret Thatcher in "Iron Lady: Solid Tenderness" at the age of 63. Post-70s, post-80s, and post-90s movie fans like to call her "Aunt Mei", and post-00s can call her grandma.
The difference between the two crowns is 29 years, during which Aunt Mei has received 11 Oscar nominations for classic films such as "Out of Africa" and "The Dream of the Covered Bridge", but she has not won the award, which is a pity. But if you think about it carefully, you will understand that this is only because Aunt May played too well in "Sophie's Choice" and could not surpass her role and performance for nearly 30 years.
Aunt Mei's performance in "Sophie's Choice" was praised by Hollywood as "the second most difficult performance coefficient in film history". Today, Ying Xiaomei will take you to review the "Sophie's Choice" given by Aunt Mei to the palace performance.
Looking back at this 1982 film from the current movie-watching habits, you will feel that its development in the first half is a little slow, but looking at it along the plot preparation and suspense setting, you will gradually substitute yourself into The stinger's perspective and enter Sophie's world.
Rookie novelist Stingo came to New York from the south of the United States, and on the first day of finding a place to live in Brooklyn, he encountered Sophie and Nathan, who were in a fierce conflict. Aunt May's first appearance in the movie is very awkward, Sophie is crying on the stairs in silk pajamas, Nathan curses her with the most vicious words, and by the way, Stingo, who came out to see the hilarity, also scolds a dog bloody head.
Sophie, who appeared again, did not have the appearance of the previous collapse and despair, and smiled and brought dinner to her new neighbor Stingo.
Some people may think that Aunt Mei's nose is too sharp, and the contour of her face is also tough, which is not a stunning beauty, but Ying Xiaomei got Aunt Mei's peak appearance in "Sophie's Choice", which began with this smile.
Remembered along with Sophie's bright smile, there was also the number that remained on her arm.
Nathan put away the scumbag face of the night before and began to welcome Stingo as a close friend. We also followEd Steingo to meet Sophie and Nathan— the daughter of a Polish professor whose father was murdered for opposing the Nazis, and who had an unspeakable experience at Auschwitz; Nathan, a biologist who rescued Sophie who had fainted in the library, and the two fell in love.
Aunt May played Sophie, who speaks English, Polish and German in the film, and in order to play this role well, she has made a lot of efforts in language. When Nathan first met, Sophie's English was half-baked; the two spent some time together, and Sophie's English was much more fluent, but still had a thick Polish accent, especially the pronunciation of r was impressive.
After meeting each other, Nathan reads Emily Dickinson's poems to Sophie like a proverb of their fate:
"Let this bed be wide and spacious, Let this bed be filled with awe, In bed, waiting for the final referee, perfect and impartial. Let the mat on the bed be flat, Make the pillows on the bed round, Don't let the yellow noise of the sunrise disturb the place. ”
The plot was set for nearly an hour, and Sophie finally began her first account of Stingo. In this narration, Sophie's eyes often look downwards and turn from side to side. Friends who know something about micro-expressions will know that this shows that the speaker is looking for excuses and escapism, that is, Sophie is not telling the truth this time.
Sophie said her father and husband were shot the day after they were sent to labor camps; Sophie also said that she went to the black market to buy ham and hide them in a skirt to dress as pregnant women in order to supplement her mother's tuberculosis, and was arrested and sent to Auschwitz.
When you find out from the micro-expressions that Aunt May designed for Sophie, your story is half-true, of course, you will find that Nathan is wrong, he is an overdone performative personality, capricious, still showing off that he wants to win the Nobel Prize during the day, and turning his face at night to suspect that Sophie is cheating.
Soon, Stingo learned from Sophie's Polish compatriots that Sophie's father was a nazi advocate, but was still killed. Stingo, who was overwhelmed with emotion, went to question Sophie, and the nervous Sophie rubbed the corners of her eyes with her hands from time to time.
After being punctured, Sophie first laughed and then cried, and she did not dare to say where her father stood, because she was "afraid of being abandoned."
In Sophie's second narration of Stingo, there is a picture of the gray-yellow tone belonging to the past, no longer just her monologue, which also shows that this time the narration is real.
One of the roots of Sophie's suffering lies in her father's position. Sophie was her father's secretary, and when she gave him a speech, she found that her father's attitude towards Polish Jews was "extermination", and the word shocked her too much, so she came to the Jewish community, watched the men, women and children coming and going there, and felt hatred for her father.
Sophie falls in love with a man named Joseph, and both he and his sister are rebels. Shortly after Joseph was killed, Sophie and her two children were arrested.
Speaking of the whereabouts of her children after Auschwitz, Sophie again looked down and turned from side to side, saying that her daughter had been killed and her son was locked up in the children's camp, but her keen friends would detect that she was hiding something.
Sophie, who regained her love after the war, was like a rose, but Sophie in Auschwitz was like a withered mallet. The two Sophies look like they may have a difference of 20 pounds in weight, and even if the credit for styling makeup is excluded, Aunt Mei is enough to lose weight for the role.
Because she looked german and spoke German, Sophie became the commander's secretary. Her shoes hid in her father's newspapers of anti-Semitic remarks, which she thought would be a lifesaver. She hated her father and his position, but she wanted to rely on this to save her son's life.
Hearing of the epidemic and the mass death of children in the children's camp, Sophie begged the commander to save her son, and she did not hesitate to sell herself. Weak and frightened, her head was trembling gently, like a fragile leaf. She had been looking forward to seeing her son after dawn, but the Commander had not fulfilled his promise to release him, and Sophie never saw him again.
At the end of Sophie's second narration, Stingo learns from Nathan's brother that Nathan is actually a madman.
Nathan proposes to Sophie, and Sophie's eyes gleam with surprise and uneasiness.
The good times were still short-lived, and Nathan went crazy again, threatening to kill Sophie and Stingo. Stingo fled with Sophie and proposed to her, hoping to start a family with her and have children, and Sophie told her in the third narration that she had never told anyone.
It turned out that when Sophie and a pair of children were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, a German officer asked her to choose one of her two children to go to the gas chamber, and if not, she would send the two children together, and in a hurry, Sophie shouted "take her daughter with her"... From this forced decision, Sophie's life was completely doomed.
When Sophie first spoke about it, she looked like she was 20 years old. And this "choice" that was recorded in the classics of film history was only filmed once, because Aunt Mei did not have the courage to act a second time.
Isn't this choice a bit familiar? In the 2010 domestic film "Tangshan Earthquake" directed by Feng Xiaogang, the mother played by Xu Fan cried out "save her brother" in the face of a son and a daughter buried in the ruins, which caused controversy about "plagiarizing "Sophie's Choice". Even if it is not plagiarism, it is clearly a tribute to Sophie's Choice.
Sophie, who survived Auschwitz, lived in self-denial for the next few years, like the walking dead—
Her father's position made her feel ashamed and angry, and so her dearest, Sophie thought that she was not innocent either.
She was admired for the deaths of her lover and sister, and Sophie thought her cowardly self was shameful.
Forced to make life-or-death choices from her children is clearly the sin of the German officer, Sophie thinks she is also guilty, and any mother in her position will think that it is unforgivable to abandon a child.
When people asked what happened to her at Auschwitz, Sophie instinctively defended herself by lying, afraid that if she told the truth, she would be abandoned, because she had long since abandoned herself and carried the sins that should not have been borne by her.
For Sophie, who is loveless, she can accept a crazy Nathan who is drunk and drunk, but she can't accept a man who wants to live a solid life with her, because in her world, there can no longer be any "worldly stability".
Aunt May shows Sophie's self-blame and self-anesthesia just right, and when you see her eyes, you can see her pain, her struggle, her escape. This is the great actress, her eyes do not lie, not only can you see the depth of her life, but also let you feel the inner contradictions that may not even be felt by herself.
And Aunt Mei's performance has accurately grasped the balance of "performance" and "restraint", and everyone can always understand her feelings and her hesitations at the first time, and will be very curious about what the role will do next.
In the end, Sophie chose to commit suicide with Nathan, ending this tragic life once and for all.
As Emily Dickinson writes in her poem:
Let this bed be wide and spacious,
For Sophie, every day was a day of judgment, and she was finally liberated.
Aunt Mei portrayed Sophie, who is beautiful in appearance and like a ruin in her heart, and also uses the role of Sophie to tell us what kind of damage war can cause to a person, which will make her lose all her dearest people, and will also make her lose her faith and lose the strength to live. If she always had a conscience, she would live under the shackles of her heart until she died.
Perhaps "Sophie's Choice" is not the best anti-war movie, but Sophie is one of the most memorable war victims on the big screen, and the reflections on war, humanity, hope, and despair brought about by this role continue to this day.
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