Sophie's Choice: A Review

SOPHIE'S CHOICE

The horrors of the Holocaust appear but fleetingly in Sophie's Choice. The damage that this great crime against humanity inflicted is, however, shown to great effect in the film. With standout performances all around, Sophie's Choice is a difficult but worthwhile film to watch.

Aspiring writer Stingo (Peter MacNicol) has come to 1947 New York from his Southern home. He rents out a room in Brooklyn where he soon makes acquaintance of two fellow boarders. One is Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline), a brilliant but mercurial figure. He goes from charming and outgoing to brutal in a heartbeat. The other is Nathan's paramour, Sophie Zawistowska (Meryl Streep). She is a recent immigrant from Poland, still finding her way in America.

The three of them soon become friends. However, Nathan is at times brutal towards Stingo and Sophie, including physically. Sophie takes it, but she remembers a different side of Nathan. He nursed her back to health early on when she came to America. Sophie is in love with Nathan despite her being a shiksa (a non-Jewish woman). 

Sophie is also Holocaust survivor, having been imprisoned at Auschwitz. As time goes on, bits of her story start emerging from her. Sophie is the daughter of a respected but fiercely antisemitic Polish professor and the wife of one of his protégés. During the Nazi occupation, both men were picked up by the Nazis and executed. Sophie herself is arrested and sent to the camps with her two children, Jan and Eva. She had become involved with a resistance fighter, whom she met through his half-sister. A simple request to translate Gestapo documents from German to Polish got her arrested. 

Nathan becomes more erratic and dangerous. After threatening to kill Stingo and Sophie, they flee to Washington, where Stingo proposes marriage. Sophie declines, telling him the rest of her story.

Sophie reveals what happened to her at Auschwitz. Her multilingual skills get her to work as a secretary to the camp commandant Rudolf Hoss (Gunther Maria Halmer). Facing many dangers and fears for her children, we learn of the shocking choice Sophie is forced to make regarding their fate. Stingo and Sophie consummate their relationship, but Nathan has too strong a hold on Sophie. Coupled with her overwhelming guilt about everything, Sophie makes her final choice.

At one point in Sophie's Choice, Nathan berates her for living while six million of his fellow Jews met their gruesome, monstrous end. He is accusatory in his tone and manner, as if she used the Holocaust version of white privilege to escape gassing. As Sophie tells Stingo her experiences in Auschwitz, we see that living was devastating. Sophie is a haunted, broken woman, done in by all that she has seen and lived through. 

Director Alan Pakula (who also adapted William Styron's novel) keeps things mostly on a simple and direct level. The scene where Sophie first recounts part of her past is a prime example. Bathed in soft moonlight, Pakula keeps a tight closeup on Meryl Streep's face. We do get flashbacks within the scene. However, the soft, haunted voiceover fills the viewer with immense sadness. We are drawn into this collapsing world.

Sophie's Choice is essentially a three-person film. It is not exactly a love triangle in that Stingo and Sophie do not become lovers until the end. She also maintains a misguided love for Nathan. Each of the three main performances work.

Meryl Streep earned her first Lead Actress Oscar for the film. As Sophie, she has a heavy load to lift. She has to act in Polish, German and with a Polish accent when speaking English. She also has to be Sophie, both the woman desperate to survive and the one trying to start again. Streep comes through in her performance. One of the strongest yet perhaps little-noticed parts of Streep's performance is whenever Sophie struggles to find the correct English word. This is something that would be natural to an immigrant. 

More than the technical skills Streep brought to the role, there is the emotional one. In the aforementioned moonlight confession scene, Streep has to keep things still, soft, as she slowly reveals some of the horrors that she lived through. It is that soft, still manner that draws the viewer in. One feels as if one is listening to a confession, of a woman starting to emotionally unburden herself. She seems gay and lighthearted with Nathan. Here, with the more sensitive Stingo, Sophie seems to be able to open up with.

Streep also has a wonderful moment where she defuses a potentially deadly situation with the camp commandant's bitchy daughter. Sophie manages to evade being turned in and even slightly winning her confidence. It is a scene that has some tension, allowing for relief when it ends. It should be remembered that Streep has to do all this and do it in German.

I do wonder if at times, Meryl Streep plays Sophie as a perpetually trapped woman. There are moments where it can feel a bit theatrical and overwrought. However, one does remember the life Sophie has lived through. As such, one can be a bit generous.

While Meryl Streep earned many accolades for Sophie's Choice, I am surprised that Kevin Kline did not. His Nathan Landau was a fascinating and brilliant performance. He does not hit a wrong note with this contradictory man. Nathan is exuberant, almost childlike in his manner. He can also quickly shift to terrifying and brutal. Nathan's mercurial nature is eventually explained by his brother Larry (Stephen D. Newman). Once we learn his truth, it does make all his past actions understandable. Until then, we see Nathan as both good and bad, loving and abusive. When he condemns Sophie for surviving, we see a man who in his own way was devastated by the Holocaust. He did not live through it but knows that he would have been a target.

It is more impressive when you think that this is Kline's film debut.

I thought well if not great of Peter MacNicol's Stingo. This Truman Capote-like figure was our guide into this story. He was fine, Southern drawl and all. He did especially well when working with Streep and/or Kline. It is when he is not with them that his performance and Sophie's Choice go a bit off. We get a subplot of his attempted romantic escapades that did not seem to fit at all. We also get a voiceover that sometimes becomes jarring.

Nestor Almendro's cinematography and Marvin Hamlisch's score also received Oscar nominations. Sophie's Choice does have a sepia look whenever Sophie remembers the past. It is a credit to the film that it does not become intrusive or look out of place. While the music is not dominant or swelling, the moments that there is music do elevate the scene. Pakula, however, opted to have no music for Sophie's moonlight confession, which was a wise decision.

Sophie's Choice is a small portrait of survivor's guilt. It has strong performances and a tragic, moving story to it. Perhaps a bit long due to Stingo's story, Sophie's Choice will move the viewer to remember that some wounds will never truly heal. 

DECISION: B+