Sophie's Choice is one of those films I always meant to watch, and finally got the chance. It is best to go into it with as little idea as to what it's about as possible, as it's a slow film with a lot of layers that get peeled off one by one. A young would-be-author from the South moves to Brooklyn and befriends his neighbors, the couple Nathan and Sophie. All three hit it off, but Nathan's bipolar tendencies do puncture their friendship at times. Sophie, however, is a calm soul as kind as she is tortured by her past in Auschwitz. As the author, Stingo, gets to know them better, he is also taken deeper and deeper into Sophie's past, where a hidden pain resides.

Sophie's Choice brilliantly captures two polar opposite worlds. The colourful and tranquil Brooklyn is contrasted strikingly by a late 1930s Poland occupied by Nazis, where the colour drains so much out of the film that any further and it would be black-and-white. The present in Brooklyn is a good haven to have and catch our breath between glimpses into Sophie's horrible past.

At the end of the day, in spite of the emotionally shattering story, Sophie's Choice is a story about hope and redemption. The performances certainly helped. Peter MacNicol and Kevin Kline are both wonderful as polar opposite personalities, united by a common love for literature.

But Meryl Streep is utterly mesmerizing as Sophie. It's not for no reason that this was one of those Oscar-nominated performances of hers that gave that extra edge and got her the statue. All of Sophie's mannerisms, her accent, her speaking German and Polish, her searching for words in English to express what she wants to say, her restrained kindness, her pain; none of it overdone. The director even trusted Streep enough to take long shots with her as she gets into deep characterization. This is quite simply one of the finest female performances in cinema.

I did fear, throughout the film, what exactly Sophie's choice was, and I was right, for it is a scene that crushes your heart. But the film comes together in the end and ends in an emotionally satisfying way in spite of everything. Steel yourself for an emotional journey and give Sophie's Choice a view, it's a film as uplifting as it is depressing, and unmissable for cinema buffs.

1948. A young man, Stingo, moves to New York with aspirations of becoming a writer. He befriends two of his neighbours, Sophie and Nathan. Sophie is Polish and survived a Nazi concentration camp during WW2. Nathan and Sophie seem very much in love but Nathan's fits of jealousy and abuse threaten their idyllic existence. Moreover, Sophie harbours some deep secrets from her time in Auschwitz.

Excellent drama. Initially an engaging story of three friends and their relationship. This largely innocent initial period sets up the film for the later plot developments and revelations. The revelations are incredibly moving, revealing the extent of Nazi brutality and the lengths people had to go to and the decisions they had to make in order to survive it.

In addition this some other powerful subjects and themes are explored: the depths of man's inhumanity towards man, abusive relationships and why people stay in them, innocence lost.

While the plot and direction set this up to be a great movie, ensuring its classic status is an absolutely mesmerising performance from Meryl Streep as Sophie. Everything about her performance is perfect, down to the last word of dialogue and facial expression. There can't be too many better performances, if any, in the history of cinema and she truly deserved her Best Actress Oscar.

"Sophie's Choice" is set in Brooklyn in the late 1940s, soon after the end of the Second World War. The three main characters are Stingo, a young writer from the Deep South, and Nathan and Sophie, the couple who befriend him. Nathan is a Jewish New Yorker who tells Stingo that he is a research biologist for a pharmaceutical company. Sophie is a Polish gentile immigrant who has survived imprisonment in Auschwitz by the Nazis. At first the atmosphere is relatively light, one of love, friendship and fun. This part of the film is shot in brilliant colour in a summer setting, and the affluent suburbs of New York seem a safe haven from the horrors of the war that has recently ravaged Europe.

Gradually, however, the tone darkens as we become aware that the gentle, beautiful Sophie is hiding a dark secret. We learn that her beloved father was not, as she claimed, an anti-Nazi intellectual, but was actually a rabid anti-Semite and admirer of Nazism whom the Germans murdered by mistake. Nathan originally seems eccentric but vivacious and likable, but as the film progresses he begins to show signs of disturbance, insulting Stingo whom he has previously treated as a friend, and unreasonably suspecting Sophie of being unfaithful to him. We, and Stingo, learn from Nathan's brother that he is in fact suffering from mental illness and that he is only employed by the pharmaceutical company in a lowly clerical position, not as a research scientist, although Sophie remains unaware of these facts.

In 1982 there had been many films made about the Second World War, but relatively few about the Holocaust, which seemed to daunt film-makers by its very enormity. Alan Pakula was therefore breaking new ground, particularly as he approached the subject from a controversial angle, tackling the question of war guilt- not the legal and moral guilt of those who perpetrated the Holocaust, but the psychological guilt of those who survived it. After liberation from the camps, many survivors such as Sophie experienced feelings of guilt that they had survived whereas many others, including friends and family members, had died. Sophie's feelings of guilt are exacerbated by her knowledge of her father's odious political views and by the fact that she had attempted to exploit her father's reputation and her fluent knowledge of German in an attempt to ingratiate herself with Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, whose secretary she became. Sophie's most agonising secret, however, is the "choice" of the film's title- the fact that she was forced by a brutal Nazi officer to choose which of her two children should live and which should die. Her love for the Jewish Nathan, whom she clings to despite his mistreatment of her, may be a way of atoning for her guilt feelings.

There are a few weaknesses in the film. During the first half the action can be too slow, and Stingo, as played by Peter MacNichol, seems a fairly weak figure. The scene of his sexual encounter with a girl who talks like a whore and acts like a prude would be funny in a comedy but is out of place in a serious film like this one. Despite these weaknesses, however, this is a film which more than justifies its ambitious theme. Meryl Streep is one of the greatest film actresses of all time, and certainly the best of the early eighties, and this is possibly her best-ever role. She demonstrated her famed linguistic talents, playing the Auschwitz scenes in excellent German and the English-language scenes with a Polish accent, but (contrary to what some hostile critics have sometimes claimed) there is more to her acting than a collection of foreign accents. One criticism that is sometimes made of Streep is that she is too intellectual an actress, self-consciously thinking her way into a part rather than trying to live it emotionally, but in this case at least this seems to be the right approach. It is difficult to see how the "Method" could cope with a role like Sophie, whose emotional experiences are so far beyond those of any actress likely to be called upon to play her. Certainly, I found this one of the most affecting performances I have seen. Never can the "Best Actress" Oscar have been better deserved. Kevin Kline was unlucky not to have been nominated for his part as the tormented and tragic Nathan. This is a dark, sombre film but one of high quality and great emotional power. 8/10