Director Alan J. Pakula's film, a departure from his conspiracy and suspense dramas, is an adaptation of William Styron's best-selling novel of the same name. The story itself is based on his experiences as a southerner living in Brooklyn in 1947.
Pakula essentially preserves the structure of Styron's novel as it begins with the arrival of Stingo, an aspiring young writer, in post - WWII Brooklyn. After settling into a boarding house, he meets a unique couple that offers him alternating support and heartbreak.
He befriends the Jewish biologist, Nathan (Kevin Kline), and his girlfriend, Sophie Zawistowska (Meryl Streep), a Polish refugee and Auschwitz survivor. But their relationship is clouded by Nathan's violent behaviour, his uncontrollable jealousy, and Sophie's unexpressed but troubling memories of war. Her stories about her life during the war begin to unravel, exposing her as a liar and adding a tone of mystery to the relationship between Nathan, Stingo, and herself.
The film culminates in a flashback, reflecting the horrors of the war and the true cause of Sophie's insufferable pain and the bitter choice she had to make
Streep deservedly won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Actress, bringing on the tears, playing both a naive girl and a worldly woman, transforming herself into a Holocaust victim and survivor. Speaking flawlessly in a Polish accent and acceptable German, she basically became Sophie Zawistowska.
And while Streep is undoubtedly the star, both Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol deserve credit for making 'Sophie's Choice' work as well as it does.
While overall this is Stingo's coming of age story, at its central core we get drawn into Sophie's saga. Pakula uses an Emily Dickinson poem to frame her story:
Ample make this bed.Make this bed with awe; In it wait till judgment break excellent and fair. Be its mattress straight, be its pillow round; Let no sunrise' yellow noise interrupt this ground.
The reference to the bed is the key to understanding Sophie's persona. She relies on Nathan's physical love, even as he abuses her, to cope with her Auschwitz ghosts.
Nestor Almendros' delicately lit cinematography, with its complex levels of saturation and subtle impositions of shadow, has often been meticulously replicated. The flesh tones are perfect, the image is solid and the colours, when in full bloom, are exquisitely formed. Equally effective is the use of music created by Marvin Hamlisch. Two themes are effectively intertwined throughout the story both melancholic.
Though the film deals with the Holocaust, it doesn't graphically show Nazi horrors, but rather refers to them abstractly, making it more effective. 'Sophie's Choice' provides the emotional core of the horror and shows what devastating experiences the survivors must deal with. For Pakula, the film was an artistic highpoint and his most deeply felt work. Undoubtedly, 'Sophie's Choice' remains his most powerful, highly distinctive drama.
Pakula essentially preserves the structure of Styron's novel as it begins with the arrival of Stingo, an aspiring young writer, in post - WWII Brooklyn. After settling into a boarding house, he meets a unique couple that offers him alternating support and heartbreak.
He befriends the Jewish biologist, Nathan (Kevin Kline), and his girlfriend, Sophie Zawistowska (Meryl Streep), a Polish refugee and Auschwitz survivor. But their relationship is clouded by Nathan's violent behaviour, his uncontrollable jealousy, and Sophie's unexpressed but troubling memories of war. Her stories about her life during the war begin to unravel, exposing her as a liar and adding a tone of mystery to the relationship between Nathan, Stingo, and herself.
The film culminates in a flashback, reflecting the horrors of the war and the true cause of Sophie's insufferable pain and the bitter choice she had to make
Streep deservedly won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Actress, bringing on the tears, playing both a naive girl and a worldly woman, transforming herself into a Holocaust victim and survivor. Speaking flawlessly in a Polish accent and acceptable German, she basically became Sophie Zawistowska.
And while Streep is undoubtedly the star, both Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol deserve credit for making 'Sophie's Choice' work as well as it does.
While overall this is Stingo's coming of age story, at its central core we get drawn into Sophie's saga. Pakula uses an Emily Dickinson poem to frame her story:
Ample make this bed.Make this bed with awe; In it wait till judgment break excellent and fair. Be its mattress straight, be its pillow round; Let no sunrise' yellow noise interrupt this ground.
The reference to the bed is the key to understanding Sophie's persona. She relies on Nathan's physical love, even as he abuses her, to cope with her Auschwitz ghosts.
Nestor Almendros' delicately lit cinematography, with its complex levels of saturation and subtle impositions of shadow, has often been meticulously replicated. The flesh tones are perfect, the image is solid and the colours, when in full bloom, are exquisitely formed. Equally effective is the use of music created by Marvin Hamlisch. Two themes are effectively intertwined throughout the story both melancholic.
Though the film deals with the Holocaust, it doesn't graphically show Nazi horrors, but rather refers to them abstractly, making it more effective. 'Sophie's Choice' provides the emotional core of the horror and shows what devastating experiences the survivors must deal with. For Pakula, the film was an artistic highpoint and his most deeply felt work. Undoubtedly, 'Sophie's Choice' remains his most powerful, highly distinctive drama.