Summary:
Sophie's Choice is a powerful drama spearheaded by what is perhaps Meryl Streep's finest performance to date.
More DetailsAbout Sophie's Choice (1982)
A WWII concentration-camp survivor moves to Brooklyn and meets an unusual young man who gives her life a lift. Streep won the Best Actress Oscar.
Starring: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol, Rita Karin, Stephen D. Newman
Directed by: Alan K Pakula
Runtime: 150 minutes
Studio: Lions Gate
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Review: Sophie’s Choice
Alan K Pakula’s Oscar-winning adaptation of William Styron’s novel is set in 1947 and tells the story of an American writer Stingo (Peter MacNicol) who moves into a house in Brooklyn where the rooms are rented out to different tenants. Stingo meets and becomes close friends with a couple upstairs – Sophie Zawistowski (Meryl Streep) and Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline). While Stingo works on his novel he shares in the ups and downs of Sophie and Nathan’s relationship and in Sophie he slowly learns about her origins in Poland, of her imprisonment in a concentration camp and of a terrible choice that she had to make.
Stingo is fairly quiet at the start and keeps to himself. His first knowledge of Sophie and Nathan is hearing them having sex in the room above his. Next thing Nathan is storming out of the house in a fit of rage where he exchanges some less than flattering words with Stingo. When Nathan returns and makes up with Sophie, he apologises to Stingo and the trio become close friends. Nathan is obsessed with the Holocaust and the injustice of the Nazis that escaped the trials at Nuremberg. He is both loving and hostile with Sophie, reminding her of her good fortune in surviving the war while many of her people including her parents and husband all died. Over time Stingo learns many difficult truths about Sophie and in a series of flashbacks we witness her as a young woman in awe of her father and later as a prisoner of the Nazis. Only at the very end of the film do we learn of the choice Sophie had to make.
Sophie’s Choice is rightly hailed as a well-acted drama with Meryl Streep’s Oscar-winning performance considered one of the finest ever committed to film. The critics don’t lie. Streep is superb as Sophie who initially appears glamorous and at ease with her life in America but beneath that smile are painful memories eating away at her. The depictions of Sophie in Auschwitz may not be violent, but seeing her emaciated and with shortened hair is more than enough to emphasize one of the darkest periods in world history there will ever be. Kline and MacNichol provide solid support in their respective leads but the performance of Streep is the dominant factor here and it doesn’t disappoint. At 150 minutes the film may seem overlong to many people and perhaps it could have been condensed a little but at no point did I feel bored by the difficult events portrayed. If you do watch Sophie’s Choice be prepared for the emotional ending that hits hard and for the famous scene that Streep did in one take because she couldn’t bring herself to film it more than once.
Sophie’s Choice is a powerful drama spearheaded by what is perhaps Meryl Streep’s finest performance to date. Three great leads and a storyline that very carefully unravels Sophie’s past is well-paced and delivers an emotional hammer blow in those final reels. There is more to Sophie’s Choice than one peformance alone of course but it’s hard to look beyond the character of Sophie as the undoubted highlight here.
Verdict: 4/5
(Film source: reviewer’s own copy)
