Sophie's Choice (1982)

As I prepared to blog this month about SOPHIE'S CHOICE, I tried to recall when I first became aware of the Holocaust and concentration camps. I thought we must have covered it in history class during high school. Then, I stared at the word "holocaust" and it came back to me.  It was a TV mini-series on NBC called HOLOCAUST (1978) that showed over four nights and almost eight hours the plight of a Jewish family during the Nazis reign of terror culminating in their attempt to exterminate the Jews. The mini-series provided roles for future stars James Woods and a young actress named Meryl Streep. It must have had a profound effect on me. When I traveled through Europe after college, in between visits to castles and museums and Roman arenas, I made it a point to visit a concentration camp in Dachau, Germany, just outside of Munich. I wanted to see where these atrocities were committed and be reminded that as civilized as we think we are, mankind could be terribly barbaric and cruel.  Like one of the monuments built at Dachau says, "Never Again."

Steven Spielberg's SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993) is the most well known and acclaimed film about the Holocaust.  Before SCHINDLER'S LIST there weren't many films that tackled the subject.  But there were a few. THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (1959) based on Frank's actual diary and directed by George Stevens (GIANT) showed us the face and life of a young Jewish girl before she was caught and sent to a concentration camp. Samuel Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE (1980) based on Fuller's experiences in World War II in an army infantry unit from D-Day to Germany has a few scenes at the end of the film with soldiers encountering concentration camps and its horrors.  But there's another film that had a concentration camp subplot wrapped around a love triangle in New York in the late 1940's after World War II. It was SOPHIE'S CHOICE (1982) written and directed by Alan J. Pakula based on the novel by William Styron. And starring in it was that young actress who appeared in HOLOCAUST.  Meryl Streep. 

My interest in SOPHIE'S CHOICE stems from one of my favorite people that I worked with in the film business. His name was Branko Lustig. He was a Croatian assistant director/production manager when I met him working on an NBC mini-series called DRUG WARS: THE KIKI CAMERENA STORY (1990). Branko had survived the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp as a young boy.  He showed us his concentration camp number tattooed on his arm by the Nazis.  One night when we complained about how cold it was during filming, Branko reminded us that on a cold night in Auschwitz, fleas would jump from cold dead corpses to warm live bodies. We never complained again. Branko would go on to become a producer and win an Academy Award with Steven Spielberg and Gerald Molen for producing SCHINDLER'S LIST.  Later, he was one of the producers on Ridley Scott's GLADIATOR (2000). Not bad for a survivor of one of the worst concentration camps during World War II. One of Branko's earliest film credits was as production supervisor for the concentration camp scenes shot in Yugoslavia for SOPHIE'S CHOICE.  I imagine the filmmakers leaned on Branko's personal experiences for the realism in those sequences.  Branko Lustig recently passed away in 2019 in his home country of Croatia at the age of 87.

SOPHIE'S CHOICE is a hard film to pin down.  It's a love story. It's a drama. It's a mystery. It's a tragedy. Set in New York in 1947, young aspiring writer Stingo (Peter MacNicol) arrives on a bus from the South and moves into a Brooklyn boarding house known as "the Pink Palace",  intent on writing his first novel.  He becomes acquainted with his neighbors above him: Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline), a research biologist prone to mood swings and his Polish girlfriend, the beautiful but fragile Sophie Zawistowska (Meryl Streep). Stingo first meets them when Nathan and Sophie have a fight. But they soon become friends, having dinner together and even taking an excursion to Coney Island. Stingo begins to learn more about his new friends. Sophie came to America after the war. Pale and anemic, trying to learn English at a night school, Sophie fainted in a library. Nathan came to her rescue, nursed her back to health and they fell in love.

Interested in meeting the fairer sex, Nathan introduces Stingo to Leslie Lapidus (Greta Turken), who appears to be as voracious for sex as Stingo but turns out to be a prude. Stingo returns to the boarding home and finds Sophie alone.  She invites Stingo to her room and reveals more of her past. She was married to an associate of her father in Krakow.  She was sent to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp for stealing a ham. Sophie's actually Catholic not Jewish. And from the cuts on her wrist, Sophie has attempted suicide. Stingo tells Sophie she can trust him with her secrets.  Nathan returns and borrows Stingo's manuscript to read. Nathan loves the manuscript. They take a walk out on the Brooklyn Bridge to celebrate. Later, they celebrate Nathan's breakthrough at his research job. But Nathan's mood turns mecurial again. He rails at Sophia on why she survived the Holocaust and six million Jews died.  Sophie disappears from the house.

Searching for Sophie, Stingo visits her employer Dr. Blackstock (Joseph Leon).  Stingo discovers from Blackstock that Sophie's father was not a champion to Jews like she had told him but an anti-semitic who was friends with the Nazis. Sophie returns to the Pink Palace. When Stingo asks why Sophie lied to him about her father, Sophie reveals her darkest secrets.  We flashback to Krakow in 1938. Sophie hates her father who espouses extermination of the Polish Jews. She's arrested as a collaborator after her resistance lover is murdered and sent to Auschwitz with her two children who are separated from her upon arriving at the camp. For her language skills, she's chosen as a translator/secretary for the camp commandant Commander Rudolf Hoess (Gunther Maria Halmer). Sophie tries to win her son's freedom and almost sleeps with Hoess but she's sent back to the barracks in Block Three.

Nathan asks Stingo to meet his brother Larry (Stephen D. Newman) who Nathan says liked Stingo's manuscript. Larry reveals to Stingo that his brother Nathan is not what he seems and asks Stingo to keep tabs on Nathan. Nathan proposes to Sophie but then has a breakdown. He later calls Sophie, threatening to kill both Sophie and Stingo. Stingo and Sophie flee the Pink Palace, hiding in a cheap hotel room on the outskirts of New York. Stingo offers to marry Sophie, take her to his uncle's farm in Virginia where they could raise a family.  But Sophie tells Nathan her final secret.  When she was sent to Auschwitz with her two children, a guard told Sophie only one of her kids could stay in the camp.  The other would be sent to the gas chamber. Sophie had to make a choice. Sophie and Stingo share a night of passion but Sophie returns to Nathan and their doomed romance. 

SOPHIE'S CHOICE is about dealing with life after witnessing so much death. Sophie is like a ghost after the horrors she experienced at Auschwitz. She tries to live again, immigrating to America, learning English, attending night school to forge a new life.  Sophie was forced to make an unimaginable choice in the concentration camp that haunts her.  She's cursed in making choices.  She unwittingly chooses to become lovers with the unhinged Nathan which will lead her to more despair. She has a choice to leave Nathan for Stingo but she doesn't. Sophie grapples with the guilt of a survivor.  Why did she survive the Holocaust and millions of others including her children did not?  Nathan makes her feel alive and sexy, a temporary distraction from a past she cannot escape. Nathan has as many skeletons in his closet as Sophie has in hers.  Their passionate love affair will end in a perverse way no one could imagine.

Stingo is our guide in SOPHIE'S CHOICE.  Like Stingo arriving in the big city from his southern roots, we the audience are naive to what we are going to learn about Sophie and Nathan.  Director Pakula reveals bits of information carefully, slowly, building tension as the film goes on. Pakula doesn't play his hand too early.  We observe the events unfolding at the same time as Stingo. We never learn any information sooner than Stingo. We are on this dark journey of discovery together. 

At first, director Alan J. Pakula seems an odd choice to have directed SOPHIE'S CHOICE. Pakula had made a name for himself directing paranoid thrillers like KLUTE (1971) starring Jane Fonda, THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974) with Warren Beatty, and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976) starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. All modern stories.  SOPHIE'S CHOICE is a period drama film and a love triangle. But SOPHIE'S CHOICE has an aura of paranoid to it as well as mystery. We know something's up with Nathan and his mood swings but we're not exactly sure what his story is.  We know Sophie carries a tremendous guilt but we're not sure what the cause of her guilt is. Pakula builds this paranoia we feel incrementally, just slightly gnawing at the back of our minds until Nathan and Sophie's secrets are revealed. Pakula would not be a prolific director and he did make other dramas after SOPHIE'S CHOICE.  But he's better know for his thrillers. In later years, he would direct THE DEVIL'S OWN (1987) with Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt and PRESUMED INNOCENT (1990) also with Harrison Ford. 

The three actors at the heart of SOPHIE'S CHOICE are the key to the film's success or failure.  Pakula hits it out of the ballpark with Meryl Streep. Streep was a rising star who had already won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in Robert Benton's KRAMER VS KRAMER (1979). But Sophie in SOPHIE'S CHOICE was one of her first full fledged leading roles and a chance to show off her skill with languages as she has to carry a Polish accent throughout the movie.  Streep's Sophie is fragile and beautiful, a survivor who's trying to move on in the world and live after the terrible horrors she experienced in a Nazi concentration camp. Like fellow actor Robert De Niro, Streep is a chameleon, willing to do anything for the part.  Her transformation between Sophie after the war and her concentration camp scenes in flashbacks are chilling.  Streep would win the 1982 Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Sophie in SOPHIE'S CHOICE.

Kevin Kline as the enigmatic Nathan is hit and miss.  SOPHIE'S CHOICE would be Kline's first feature film (although he made THE PIRATE OF PENZANCE first but it was released after SOPHIE'S CHOICE). He's charismatic and charming when Nathan's in a happier state of mind.  But when Nathan turns darker and violent, Kline doesn't quite have the dramatic weight yet to make Nathan out and out frightening. Ironically, John Cleese would select Kline to play the buffoonish Otto in Cleese's hit comedy A FISH CALLED WANDA (1988) because of Kline's performance in SOPHIE'S CHOICE. You can see some similarities in the two roles but Kline's Otto is clearly more humorous (and would win Kline an Academy Award for Best Support Actor for FISH). But SOPHIE'S CHOICE was the beginning of a long, illustrious career for Kline in films like Lawrence Kasdan's THE BIG CHILL (1983), Kasdan's SILVERADO (1985), another film with Pakula in CONSENTING ADULTS (1992), and Ang Lee's THE ICE STORM (1997).

Peter MacNicol as Stingo is probably the weakest of the three characters. Stingo should be more handsome, a real threat to Nathan for Sophie's attention.  But MacNicol is short of stature and not necessarily a matinee idol.  He does resemble a writer and he's a good listener for Sophie.  Stingo seems like a third wheel in many of the scenes with Sophie and Nathan. But don't fret for MacNicol.  He would get a chance to show off his language (and comedy) skills playing a creepy Carpathian professor trying to lure Sigourney Weaver to his supernatural master in Ivan Reitman's GHOSTBUSTERS II.  And MacNicol would star in the hit Fox TV series ALLY MCBEAL (1997 - 2002) playing an eccentric lawyer in a law firm. 

It's ironic that Stingo is the least interesting character as Stingo is based on SOPHIE'S CHOICE author  William Styron. Styron came to New York from the Virginia to become a writer and Styron met a young Polish woman at the boarding house he lived in. He only knew her for a couple of weeks but as Styron tells it in a special feature about the film, there was something about her that felt doomed. That encounter would be the inspiration for Styron to write his novel Sophie's Choice.

SOPHIE'S CHOICE is an unsettling film that will stay with you hours after you watch it whether you liked the film or not.  It's subject matter of survivor's guilt and it's flashbacks to Sophie's horror in the concentration camp make it unique. Director Pakula treats the subject matter and the source novel with great seriousness and unfolds the story like a novel, taking his time to reveal the film's most powerful sequences.  SOPHIE'S CHOICE made a star out of Meryl Streep  who has become one of our greatest actresses of all time.  Pakula's casting of Kline and MacNicol to round out the triangle is daring but slightly off the mark as a whole. SOPHIE'S CHOICE is an important film of the 80s, worth checking out.