Streep! Streep! Streep! Streep! Sorry, I’m dazzled by Meryl Streep. The condition is known as Streep throat. It begins with Sophie’s Choice. Let’s put on our Serious Acting hats and investigate.

The Praise

Sophie’s Choice won Meryl Streep her first Academy Award for best actress (she’d previously won for supporting) and was also nominated for its cinematography, adapted screenplay, original score, and costume design. It appeared in many critics’ top 10 lists for 1982 — Roger Ebert had it at No. 1 — and it’s No. 91 on the American Film Institute’s most recent list of the 100 greatest movies ever made. Premiere Magazine has Streep’s portrayal of Sophie at No. 3 on its list of the 100 greatest performances of all time.

The Context

Today you know Meryl Streep as the most Oscar-nominated performer in history and one of the best actresses of her generation. But if you’d said 30 years ago that she would someday achieve that status … well, a lot of people would have believed you, actually. She was already on her way.

The New Jersey-raised, Vassar- and Yale-educated actress first came to prominence in 1978, when she played a leading role in the NBC miniseries Holocaust, followed soon by a crucial supporting role in The Deer Hunter. She won an Emmy for the former and was nominated for an Oscar for the latter. In 1979, she appeared in The Seduction of Joe Tynan, Manhattan, and Kramer vs. Kramer; it was that last one that got her an Oscar for best supporting actress, fighting to bring nuance to a role that had been written as little more than the protagonist’s heartless ex-wife. Streep’s visibility was further enhanced by the fact that she’d been in two back-to-back Best Picture winners, Deer Hunter and Kramer, and had managed to be memorable even though both were focused on their male characters.

Now it was time for Streep to quit supporting people and be a lead. Right out of the gate, she nailed it, earning a best actress nomination for The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Time magazine did a cover story about her in conjunction with the film’s release, and the profile mentioned that she’d just finished shooting Still of the Night (then called Stab) and was about to make Sophie’s Choice.

William Styron’s 1979 novel had been a bestseller, and Streep was determined to play the title role when she learned it was being adapted for the big screen. She told Time that she employed “nefarious means” to get an early copy of the script, then begged director Alan J. Pakula (All the President’s Men) for the part. Pakula’s first choice, Liv Ullmann, had become unavailable, so it’s hard to imagine he put up much of a fight when Streep approached him. (They were both graduates of the Yale Drama School, too. Surely school spirit counts for something.)

It was Streep who recommended acclaimed stage actor Kevin Kline for the role of Nathan, Sophie’s eccentric boyfriend; it was Kline’s first movie. (The New York Times had already called him “the American Olivier” for his theater work.) Another stage actor, Peter MacNicol, who’d made his film debut in Dragonslayer (1981), was also cast, rounding out what is essentially a three-person drama. But while Kline and MacNicol both gave good performances, it was clearly Streep’s film.

The Movie

It’s 1947, Brooklyn. A Southerner who’s come north to seek his fortune as a novelist befriends the people who live above him at the boardinghouse: Sophie, a Polish concentration camp survivor, and her boyfriend, Nathan, a brilliant and moody biologist. The three become inseparable, though Sophie and Nathan’s relationship is in turmoil. A couple of extended flashbacks shed light on what Sophie experienced during the war, and how it continues to haunt her.

What It Influenced

Of all the thousands of films ever made, how many have titles that became common figures of speech? A handful, maybe? Sophie’s Choice is one of them, its title now shorthand for a seemingly impossible decision between two equally attractive options. (“My best friend is getting married at the same time that my favorite band is doing their farewell concert?! What a Sophie’s choice!”) Even people who haven’t seen the movie know what the expression means, a testament to the movie’s impact on pop culture.

The more significant impact was that it cemented Streep’s status as a force to be reckoned with. This was her first Oscar win for best actress — and with all the nominations she’s had since then, we tend to forget that it’s also her only one. She’s famous for being a genius with accents and dialects, and some have dismissed her style as being too “Look at me, I’m ACTING!” There may be some validity to that in some of her work, but not in Sophie’s Choice. Her performance here should be (and often has been) studied by acting students, not just because she gets the character’s speech patterns right — though that’s a more difficult component than non-actors realize — but because she makes the character seem like a real person without it being obvious that Streep is working. Roger Ebert said it this way in his 4-star review:

“Meryl Streep is a wonder as Sophie. She does not quite look or sound or feel like the Meryl Streep we have seen before…. There is something juicier about her this time; she is merrier and sexier, more playful and cheerful in the scenes before she begins to [talk] about her past. Streep plays the Brooklyn scenes with an enchanting Polish-American accent (she has the first accent I’ve ever wanted to hug), and she plays the flashbacks in subtitled German and Polish. There is hardly an emotion that Streep doesn’t touch in this movie, and yet we’re never aware of her straining. This is one of the most astonishing and yet one of the most unaffected and natural performances I can imagine.”

Janet Maslin likewise praised Streep in her New York Times review:

“Miss Streep accomplishes the near-impossible, presenting Sophie in believably human terms without losing the scale of Mr. Styron’s invention. In a role affording every opportunity for overstatement, she offers a performance of such measured intensity that the results are by turns exhilarating and heartbreaking. Though it’s far from a flawless movie, Sophie’s Choice is a unified and deeply affecting one. Thanks in large part to Miss Streep’s bravura performance, it’s a film that casts a powerful, uninterrupted spell.”

In other words, and at the risk of overselling it, if you’re not convinced that Meryl Streep is a supremely talented actress, this would be a good movie to watch to change your mind.

What to Look For

So this is interesting. The movie is called Sophie’s Choice, and the specifics of what that refers to are probably common knowledge even among those who haven’t seen it — yet it’s not until the last 15 minutes of the movie that it comes up. Before that, there is no mention of a choice, either impending or having already occurred. Someone who knew nothing about the movie would probably assume that the title refers to Sophie having to decide between Nathan and the Southerner. (It doesn’t.) Only in the end do we learn that a) Sophie once had to make a difficult choice and b) it has affected everything she has said and done throughout the film.

This fascinates me because I don’t remember ever NOT knowing what Sophie’s choice was — like I said, it’s common knowledge in the world — and yet it’s actually kind of a huge spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie. I’d be curious to know what it’s like for a viewer to experience the film without knowing that beforehand. Streep’s performance is devastating anyway; I can only imagine how the shock of it would add to its power.

What’s the Big Deal?

This is the film where Meryl Streep, having already made a splash, reached the pinnacle of her success — not as a “movie star” or a “celebrity” but as a legitimately gifted actress, and one serious about her craft. Such actors are disappointingly rare in the movie business, which is focused more on performing (i.e., putting on a show) than on acting (i.e., bringing a character to life). Streep is the real deal, and Sophie’s Choice is what convinced everyone of it.

Further reading: Beware of all of these if you’re one of the lucky few who don’t already know what The Choice is all about.

Here is Roger Ebert’s review; Janet Maslin’s review; the Time magazine profile of Streep; and an informative essay at Turner Classic Movies.

Tags: alan j. pakula, Kevin Kline, meryl streep, peter macnicol, sophie's choice