Sophie’s Choice does not manage to elevate both its tones equally high. While its dramatic part is strong, sustained by a fantastic Meryl Streep, on the other hand the more romantic one based on the “sort of” love triangle between Streep, Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol is quite weak.

Stingo (Peter MacNicol), a southerner aspiring writer, arrives to Brooklyn in hopes to find inspiration for his novel. Little did he know that his life will change completely after meeting his two neighbours: the eccentric biologist Nathan (Kevin Kline) and the tender Auschwitz survivor Sophie (Meryl Streep).

When watching the film, the first striking thing that gets your attention are the more technical elements of the production such as the locations, sets and costumes. The great care and attention to all those elements are incredible. From the interior of the apartments to external locations such as the Manhattan Bridge, as well as the quirky Sunday dresses of the odd couple formed by Streep and Kline, all elements are meticulously crafted creating the perfect atmosphere for the film.

An aside mention is required for the scenes occurring in Krakow, Warsaw, and Auschwitz. Although it may be true that the horror of the camps, ghettos and awful treatment against the Jewish community seem too softened, the truth is that it looks like the intention was to take a more “artsy” approach for its representation. Néstor Almendros’ photography takes central stage for those sequences with a sepia tonality of colours and great use of lighting.

But the most radiant thing in the entire film is Meryl Streep. When she is on screen everything is more brilliant. Her performance is undisputable. Streep manages to perfection the presentation of all the range of emotions of her character, from happiness to sadness, but always with an underlying tone of melancholy and regret for which its reasons get very adequately and progressively revealed as the film moves forward up until the end.

As a consequence, it is precisely the moments in which the film relies more on the qualities of Streep that everything is most captivating. Those being the more dramatically driven section of the film concerning her past as a victim of the Nazi atrocities, how she tried to survive them, and what are the psychological reminisces that they have caused in her present.

Unfortunately, the movie steers away from that storyline in too frequent times, to pay undeserving attention to the bizarre and not that believable story of the love triangle among our three protagonists or even exclusively on Stingo’s boring life. Peter MacNicol is just bad, you never get to care about his character or even worse, as it profoundly affects the overall film, you never get to believe his love for Sophie. It is also fair to say that the script does not help either on reinforcing those elements from MacNicol’s character.

The case of Kevin Kline is a bit exceptional as his exaggeratedly over the top acting feels completely out of place, but since this is addressed by the writing, we could give it a pass. Still, you do not care very much about him either.

To sum up, it feels that this adaptation of William Styron’s novel would have benefit from an increased focus on the character of Sophie considering that the best thing in the movie is Meryl Streep. Sadly, and in spite the great work in building the world where the story takes place, this is not the case with overrepresentation of other uninteresting characters and plot elements damaging considerably the quality of the film.