Stanley Kauffmann

“But Almendros photographs Meryl Streep excellently, which is hardly an incidental matter since her performance as Sophie is the film's sole achievement. To begin with, she looks more translucently beautiful than ever, and she has the Polish accent right. (I know; some of my best friends are Polish.) What Streep has wrought, possibly with Pakula's help, is a psychological verity for Sophie that she reveals through patterns of motion: she seems often to be moving sideways to avoid confrontaion, she seems to be shunning the close scrutiny of others. Yes, of course, she often faces people, often embraces, kisses, converses with them, but the overall impression of her movement is sidling, gently attempting to hide herself in open space. Through this kinetic concept, Streep gives Sophie an aura of concealment. We know, without any grimaces or meaningful sighs, that she is not revealing her whole self to anyone, including her lover. When the truth about her father arrives, when we learn of her "choice," they seem like resolutions of suspended chords.

“Sometimes Pakula hands the picture over to Streep: the camera fixes on her in medium close-up and, virtually without any change of shot, she tells a long story. It's what Bergman has doen a number of times with Ullmann, and it's been done before with Streep. (It's done even in her recent abysmal thriller Still of the Night. She handles these moments like a virtuoso--a compliment that contains a hint of worry. Virtuosos like John Wood or George C. Scott can grow to consume their roles rather than portray them. Streep is nowhere near that solipsism yet, but she is at the point where her knowledge of her excellence has begun to accompany the excellence itself.

“This is not a quibble: it's a concern for a major talent. Here are two moments that are wonderful but in which we are aware that she knows it. When she first talks about her father, she sits on a piano bench, playing with a feather boa that hangs about her neck. She plays "off" the boa adroitly, but cleverly. Late she recalls a moment when, after she had reached Sweden following her rescue, she felt that Christ had turned away from her. Listen to what she does with the one word "Christ": the tiny pause just before it, the slow formation of the first consonants, the suspension of the middle, the almost reluctant close of the word. She makes the monosyllable an utterance. It's wonderful Very, very few American actors could do it, and it's something worth being able to do. Still, it's noticeable.

“None of which is to deny that the value of the film is in Streep's richness….”

Stanley Kauffmann
New Republic, Jan. 10 & 17, 1983
Field of View, 209 ?
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“To see within a few weeks Paul Newman in The Verdict, Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice, and Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie is to be permitted some pride in American acting: and in its ability to triumph over American filmmaking conditions.”

Kauffmann
The New Republic, Jan. 24, 1983
Field of View, 212
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