Le choix de Sophie

After enjoying Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline in the recent ensemble comedy "A Prairie Home Companion," it was great to see their dramatic performances in "Sophie's Choice," the movie that made them famous. Here, they play Sophie and Nathan, a volatile young couple living in a Brooklyn boardinghouse in the summer of 1947. Their story, and eventually the story of the Polish Sophie's time in a concentration camp during World War II, is presented through the eyes of Stingo (Peter MacNichol), their young Southern neighbor.

Though other characters appear, especially during the flashbacks, "Sophie's Choice" is largely a three-person drama that relies on subtle interactions. Meryl Streep can always be counted on to give a nuanced performance, but here, especially, she raises the bar. Speaking three languages (including a very realistic portrayal of how foreigners can hesitate and hunt for words when speaking English), going from a haggard Auschwitz inmate to a pretty "blooming rose," consumed by guilt even during the madcap or romantic moments she shares with Nathan, she gives a brilliant performance of a very complex character. Her big scenes with Nazi officers are of course powerful, but I was equally struck by smaller moments: the heartbreaking little flashes of emotion that reveal Sophie's postwar wounds, or the extraordinary conversation she has with a Nazi's daughter.

Kline throws himself into the role of the "fatally glamorous" Nathan and also displays impressive range: he goes from charming to menacing. MacNichol is not up to these (admittedly high) standards. He can play the wide-eyed innocent, but he always seems somewhat thick-headed and lacking in passion. The movie would be more effective if Stingo seemed more truly changed by his experiences with Sophie and Nathan.

Despite Stingo's weakness as a character, I liked the unusual structure that reveals Sophie's story gradually, in flashbacks that draw closer and closer to the ultimate horror. The movie is nicely shot and some of the Brooklyn scenes look as though they actually could have come from a 1940s movie. But no director from the 1940s would have confronted the brutalities of the Holocaust so directly, and few actresses from any era could have given a performance like Streep's.

Meryl Streep's performance as Sophie is simply the finest performance ever captured on film. Period. The subtlety and depth with which she reveals Sophie's wounds are simply spellbinding. She is at once radiantly beautiful, yet deeply wounded. She is charming, yet vulnerable. She is someone you want to love, yet someone whose pain keeps you at a distance.

This film takes the viewer on an intense emotional journey. Anyone, but especially anyone who is a parent, would have to be an emotional rock to not be absolutely haunted by this story. As much as I have studied and pondered the Holocaust, this film has connected me to those events more emotionally than I have ever been before.

This film, and Ms. Streep's performance, are a gift to humanity.

Sophie's Choice is one of those films I always meant to watch, and finally got the chance. It is best to go into it with as little idea as to what it's about as possible, as it's a slow film with a lot of layers that get peeled off one by one. A young would-be-author from the South moves to Brooklyn and befriends his neighbors, the couple Nathan and Sophie. All three hit it off, but Nathan's bipolar tendencies do puncture their friendship at times. Sophie, however, is a calm soul as kind as she is tortured by her past in Auschwitz. As the author, Stingo, gets to know them better, he is also taken deeper and deeper into Sophie's past, where a hidden pain resides.

Sophie's Choice brilliantly captures two polar opposite worlds. The colourful and tranquil Brooklyn is contrasted strikingly by a late 1930s Poland occupied by Nazis, where the colour drains so much out of the film that any further and it would be black-and-white. The present in Brooklyn is a good haven to have and catch our breath between glimpses into Sophie's horrible past.

At the end of the day, in spite of the emotionally shattering story, Sophie's Choice is a story about hope and redemption. The performances certainly helped. Peter MacNicol and Kevin Kline are both wonderful as polar opposite personalities, united by a common love for literature.

But Meryl Streep is utterly mesmerizing as Sophie. It's not for no reason that this was one of those Oscar-nominated performances of hers that gave that extra edge and got her the statue. All of Sophie's mannerisms, her accent, her speaking German and Polish, her searching for words in English to express what she wants to say, her restrained kindness, her pain; none of it overdone. The director even trusted Streep enough to take long shots with her as she gets into deep characterization. This is quite simply one of the finest female performances in cinema.

I did fear, throughout the film, what exactly Sophie's choice was, and I was right, for it is a scene that crushes your heart. But the film comes together in the end and ends in an emotionally satisfying way in spite of everything. Steel yourself for an emotional journey and give Sophie's Choice a view, it's a film as uplifting as it is depressing, and unmissable for cinema buffs.

I don't know why I didn't want to see Sophie's Choice, not for years. I knew about Meryl Streep's performance, Alan J Pakula. Kevin Kline and I also knew that I had to see it eventually. Well, Christmas 2017 brought the shattering story into my life and now forever in my subconscious. Extraordinary is the first word that comes to mind. Meryl Streep's performance is out of this world. Every detail in her creation is a sort of link to her heart and therefore to mine. "Emil Dickens?" Her eyes, asking the question to the awful librarian will stay with me forever. Meryl Streep as Sophie asked that question 35 years ago. Amazing! What a devastating treat. It will make me go back to see all of her films., specially "A Cry In The Dark", "Plenty", "The Bridges Of Madison County" "Julia and Julia" even "Death Becomes Her" and "The Devil Wears Prada" Thank you Meryl Streep, thank you very much.

Although achingly literary at times, moments of true emotional power are rendered by fluid storytelling, Nestor Almendros's haunting cinematography, Marvin Hamlisch's quietly effecting score, a touching performance by Peter MacNichol, and a seminal performance by Meryl Streep; one that Kim Stanley (the celebrated actress/teacher and Oscar nominated mother to Jessica Lange in 'Frances' of the same year) proclaimed, "the titanic portrayal of her generation."

No matter what your initial feelings about this film, I encourage you to go back and take in Streep's dark dance of loss, madness and, finally, sorrowful redemption.