Sophie’s Choice (1982)

 

            “Sophie’s Choice” was based on the bestselling novel by William Styron.  The screenplay was written by Alan Pakula, who also directed.  Styron envisioned Ursula Undress as Sophie, but Meryl Streep literally got on her hands and knees to beg for the role.  She beat out Liv Ullmann, Barbra Streisand, and others.  Streep learned to speak German and Polish for the part.  She lost a lot of weight for the concentration camp scenes.  Kevin Kline had earlier made “Pirates of Penzance”, but “Sophie’s Choice” was his first film to be released.  John Cleese was so taken by his performance that he was cast in “A Fish Called Wanda”.  There’s a lot of similarities in the two characters.  Peter MacNicol was chosen over 50 other actors.  The movie was critically acclaimed.  Streep won her second Oscar.  (Her first was for Supporting Actress in “Kramer vs. Kramer”.)  Her “choice” scene is considered one of her best.  It was so emotionally draining that she refused to see it until it was part of an interview with Oprah Winfrey.  The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Cinematography, Costume Design, and Original Score.

            The movie is narrated by an aspiring writer named Stingo (MacNicol, although another actor did the narration).  He gets a room at a boarding house in Brooklyn where he plans to write his first novel. He is befriended by an eccentric couple who live upstairs.  Sophie is a Polish immigrant who survived Auschwitz.  Although she is not Jewish, she was imprisoned for involvement in the Polish resistance.  She arrived at the camp with her son and daughter.  We learn that the “choice” she had to make involved her children.  Her experience in Aushwitz is seen via flashbacks.  She ends up as secretary to commandant Rudolph Hoess (Gunther Maria Halmer), so she lives in his house.  Whatever happened at Auschwitz has affected her deeply, but Stingo doesn’t have a clue.  It’s a secret that he and the audience will discover at the end

            2/3 of the movie is set in 1947 Brooklyn.  Stingo, Sophie, and Nathan (Kline) form a fairly standard love triangle.  The audience knows long before Sophie that Stingo is in love with her.  But she remains loyal to the impetuous Nathan.  He is mentally unstable, but he had saved her life.  Sophie stays in a relationship that is sometimes abusive.  Since Nathan can be insanely jealous, he sometimes threatens Stingo.  Although dysfunctional, the trio manages to weather Nathan’s storms.

            The main reason to watch “Sophie’s Choice” is to see Streep’s performance.  She is outstanding.  Her reputation for nailing accents originated with this movie.  She dominates, but she is just one leg of the tripod.  Kline gets to chew scenery and he is effective as the mentally unstable Nathan.  The character could have been a villain. However, his Nathan is endearing, not only to the audience, but to Stingo as well.  You can see why Sophie stays with him despite everything. Remarkably, the film brings out a good performance from MacNicol.  It’s a stereotypical role as Stingo is the oft-seen struggling novelist who finds his muse in a disturbed woman.  It was his second role and seemed to predict a better career than he has had.  It certainly appears at the top of his resume.

            As a Holocaust film, it is not in the front rank.  Although Sophie ends up in Auschwitz, you get no taste of life in the camp.  I guess the desaturated cinematography is supposed to remind us what the terrors of the camp were.  Sophie may have gotten a good position, but there were inmates who got jobs as staff to the Germans, so it is not unrealistic.  By placing Sophie as a secretary to the commandant, we do get a different kind of character.  There is a vague resemblance to Helen Hirsh in “Schindler’s List”.  (Hoess was also in that movie.)  Hoess is one of the top five villains of the Holocaust.  He lived with his wife and five kids in a villa at Auschwitz.  Hoess was malevolently efficient in his mass murdering.  He made Auschwitz into the most infamous death camp.  He is the only real person in the movie, but he did have an affair with a Polish political prisoner that may have been the inspiration for Sophie.

            “Sophie’s Choice” is one of those movies that has a twist that makes second viewing much less fulfilling.  It is best watched for the first time by trying to imagine what “choice” refers to.   The payoff is worth the wait.  The choice scene does not bear close scrutiny as the screenplay (and I assume the book) posits a highly unlikely situation.  As great an actress as Streep is, she does not have the looks of a woman that a death camp commandant would pick out of a crowd.  And the choice he gives her is a contrivance for plot purposes.  The movie is best viewed as a love triangle movie with a Holocaust subplot rather than as a Holocaust movie.  However, without the “choice” the movie would not have been acclaimed.  It would have been a fairly standard melodramatic romance film.

GRADE  =  B