This film as well as the book it is based on are both frequent subjects of study with the book in particular being banned in many places. Incredibly while countries in the Soviet block were upset at its depiction of anti-Semitism in Poland, Western countries were upset as well, seeing in it an attempt to absolve Catholics of some of the guilt of the Holocaust. In any case, while I was somewhat puzzled at first about how this film is actually composed of two entirely separate stories, I eventually came to appreciate how each part complements the other and it certainly lives up to its reputation as one of the world’s great film.

Southern farmboy Stingo moves to New York to write his big novel and settles in a boarding house in Brooklyn. There he befriends a highly passionate couple, Sophie, an immigrant from Poland who survived being held in a concentration camp and Nathan, a medical researcher who Sophie credits for giving her something to live for again. Stingo is quickly overwhelmed by their fun antics such as dressing up in fancy clothing on Sundays and becomes best friends with them, though he also falls in love with Sophie. But he also sees the dark side in their relationship, though when he is at his best Nathan is the best friend and lover anyone could possibly have, there are also times when he falls in fits of jealous, paranoiac rage. As such Nathan and Sophie’s relationship is a cycle of repeating breakups and reconciliations. Following a particularly bad fight in which Nathan accuses Sophie of sleeping with Stingo, leading them to move out of the boarding house, Stingo tries to search for them. In doing so, he uncovers secrete that both Nathan and Sophie have been hiding from him and each other.

Meryl Streep won a best acting Oscar for her work here as Sophie and it’s been called one of the best performances in a film ever. Kevin Kline made his debut here as Nathan and together their energy as a couple is just overwhelming in its intensity. It is all too easy to believe how the younger and inexperienced Stingo inevitably falls into the orbit of the glamorous, larger than life couple especially, as my wife noted, as they even had a much more ordinary looking actor play Stingo. Nathan’s behavior when he is at his worst more than qualifies as abusive and audiences today easily recognize the schizophrenic cycle that he is caught in. Yet Sophie remains tied to Nathan and is always overjoyed to welcome him when he returns when he calms down after each of his explosive episodes even as Stingo tries to supplant Nathan. To understand why, the film then delves into Sophie’s own past in Poland.

This is why the film really has two separate stories as Sophie recounts her ordeal at the Auschwitz camp. The nature of the tragic choice that provides the title of the book and film isn’t hard to guess and we’ve seen many accounts of the Holocaust already. But the particularity of Sophie’s grief is here that she believes herself complicit in the atrocity to some extent. Her father turns out to be a prominent Nazi sympathizer himself but became a victim when the Nazis hauled all of the university academics in Poland to the camps. She herself worked to help her father transcribe his anti-Semitic speeches without paying much attention to their content until it was too late. While imprisoned, she repeatedly tries to persuade the Nazis to release her and her children as she is a Catholic and not a Jew. Of course it is understandable that one does anything one can to survive and the cruelty of the camp authorities furthermore render her moral compromises moot. But this feeds into why she does not truly believe that she deserves to live, let alone be happy, and why is she is so dependent on Nathan and his manic extremes of passion and rage.

I suppose it is the mark of a literary genius to meld such into disparate narratives together such that they enrich each other and while this film necessarily simplifies from the novel, it does capture the central tragedy very well. Most of all the performances by the two leads are fantastic and perhaps the most puzzling thing here is why Sophie and Nathan have any interest in Stingo at all given how utterly unremarkable and ordinary he is.