Sophie’s Choice (1982)

Starring: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol, Rita Karin, Stephen D. Newman, Greta Turken

First, the Lowdown: The subject of a young writer’s crush tells him more than he bargained for.

Young Stingo has arrived to New York City from the South – full of dreams and aspirations. His current desire, to become a writer – but he knows his youth and the quiet, unchanging life on his farm have sheltered him from the bulk of human experience, thus his trip to the Big Apple. Stingo rents a room in Brooklyn and does his best to settle in. Almost immediately he is invited to dinner by the couple upstairs: Sophie and Nathan. Evening rolls around, however, and Stingo’s dinner invite seems to have dried up. Restless on his first night in a strange location, Stingo’s reading is interrupted by a loud argument happening in the room above him. The commotion spills out of the upstairs room into the central stairway. Curious, Stingo peeks out of his door to see what the matter is and watches as a man wrests himself free from his female companion – who is begging for him to stay. The man stomps off, but not without directing some of his anger at Stingo for watching the display, leaving the man’s partner, Sophie, to apologize for her boyfriend’s behaviour. Later on, Sophie appears at Stingo’s door to make good on her dinner invite of before, and assures the young man that Nathan didn’t mean anything that was said. When Stingo mentions his typing, Sophie assures that it won’t be a problem because it will remind her of her late father, who was an academic in Poland.

And sure enough, the next morning Nathan is a completely different person, cheerful and ebullient. After a few apologies about his previous behavior, Nathan invites Stingo to Coney Island for a day of fun. Against Stingo’s better judgement, he becomes quick friends with the two lovers. Things seem to be going well for the trio – until Nathan’s mood swings back to angry and morose. When Nathan gets into these kinds of moods, he starts accusing Sophie of infidelity and rants about being betrayed and humiliated. And it’s during these moments that Stingo comes to Sophie’s aid – both as a friend, and as someone who is hopelessly in love with her. Sophie confesses that as bad as Nathan is, her life has been worse: during World War II, Sophie was sent to Auschwitz – not because she was a Jew, but because her father was an academic – and the things she has to endure from her lover are nothing compared with what she had to endure there.

Sophie’s Choice is an interesting movie that is well textured and has some marvelous characterization to it. But for all of its layers, the movie has one fatal (albeit subjective) flaw for me: I saw it too late. I had a fair idea as to the movie’s subject matter – Polish immigrant survives the Holocaust and an abusive boyfriend – but it wasn’t my previous assumptions that clouded my reception of this movie. Simply put, I’ve seen much of this story told before using means that were far more captivating for me. When I found out that Stingo was a young writer coming to New York to find fortune and inspiration, I winced because the “virgin artist” cliché has been done to death. Making Stingo from the South only further worried me, but fortunately the young lad never uses any “aw, shucks” mannerisms or solves another character’s problems via an amusing anecdote about life in the country. Kevin Kline’s portrayal of Nathan was undermined by the fact that I have never seen him in a dramatic role, only comedies. I had to prevent myself from laughing when Kline first appears on screen because his ranting reminded me of a later character of his, Otto from A Fish Called Wanda. (Finding out that John Cleese picked Kevin Kline for the role after seeing Sophie’s Choice didn’t help either.)

I did find it interesting that the filmmakers found a way to put in a Holocaust flashback without making it feel shoehorned into the rest of the movie. And when the central characters have to return to the present world, the transition is not jarring. Most of all I like Peter MacNicol’s performance as Stingo, in spite of my earlier misgivings. His character is young and inexperienced, but he also exhibits the naïve determination that people have at his age, assuming that intention is enough to make in impact on other people’s lives.

Line of the Movie: “I was sent to Auschwitz because they saw I was afraid.”

Three and a half stars. Peace out.