[Carp Rodeo]

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fictional works only, please...

My pick:

Sophie's Choice - her choice, obviously.

I don't remember ever being more emotionally distraught over a scene in a movie than watching Meryl Streep forced to choose which child she can "keep," her young son or her toddler daughter, and which child shall be taken away to a concentration camp and/or killed.

It happens in such a trivial moment...one minute Sophie and her two children are being herded towards a train with Jews...she approaches a Nazi Officer and tells him there's some mistake, she's not Jewish, she's Polish - Aryan - like he is. His reply is simply evil:

"You may keep one child."

At first, she doesn't understand...but he explains it to her: she either chooses which child shall remain with her and which will go with the German, or he will take both of them from her.

She begins to plead and the German finally goes to take both children from her when she thrusts her daughter at him and screams, "take her, take my baby!"

And he does.

The look of complete and utter horror on Streep's face kills me, every time. In fact, I always vow to never watch the movie again after that scene comes on. But I can't keep that promise because Streep and Kline and MacNichol and Pakula made a perfect, glorious film.

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Wow. Obviously one of those gems I just never got around to seeing yet. Just reading your post has blown me away. Really. I will see it now. Thank you.