My experience with this film was endured without knowing anything about the story ahead of time. It was a jarringly emotional experience, so to preserve that possibility for those who I hope will see it, I will tread gingerly. What I will say is that its structure is the bedrock of its effect. It begins with a pleasant atmosphere, entirely unsuspecting. Then come ominous scenes that the characters seem to pretend to forget afterwards. Then a plunge into an entirely different world indefinitely. Then the initial mood returns without having lost a shred of credibility. Then we return to deep subjectivity of the alternate one, and when we come back, no matter how unchanged the initial setting remains, we are never the same.<br /><br />Note the title. Sophie's Choice. Then note that it essentially features merely three people, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline and Peter MacNichol. One's first inclination as to what the title character's choice shall be proves to be a disquieting revelation of what little we've experienced in our lives. What do we know? Whatever the most harrowing or ecstatic of the moments through which we've lived barely scratch the surface of life's possibilities owing to the infinite extent of human nature. The relationship between two of the characters is a testament to what a person can and can't live with, and what a person can't live without. Peter MacNichol's mediating protagonist learns this, and so do we, through him.<br /><br />When we are his age, we never believe people, no matter how much we respect them or love them, when they tell us that there is so much we don't understand. As the film begins, we are introduced to the two people he happens to meet when he moves to Brooklyn. In spite of our, and his, initial reaction to them, we grow to believe we know and understand them. We have no reason to believe that when they behave, speak and react, they are inventing or denying anything. Upon reflection, the last line we hear Sophie say to the impressionable young central character has no way of indicating her true reason for saying it, whether it's true or false.<br /><br />All three leads are becoming, deeply realized and even unique in their performances, but Streep deserved all of her acclaim. She truly delivers one of the best portrayals I have ever seen in any dramatic medium. Where she, as I said, neither invents or denies, intimates an authentic facet of human nature's intricacies, more normal and sexy in the early scenes before showing us who Sophie really is. It is a mystery for many how someone speaks in a foreign accent, in this case pivotal to her role, and even speaks the corresponding language, without pretending or affecting, or doing an impression. There is no sign of any seams through which we can glimpse the devil who wears prada or the adventure mom in The River Wild. Without leaning into any extremes, there is hardly an emotion left untackled by Streep in this film.<br /><br />Sophie's Choice appears as if it might as well be shot with a soft lens, a film whose scaffolding is its Oscar-winning star. I cannot tell you how contrary that appearance is, and how eerily relevant that deception is as analogy to the movie itself. There is a rawness that remains untouched by many filmmakers superior to he who directed this, Alan J. Pakula, who also adapted it from William Styron's novel. Pakula is sneaky. The structure of the film could easily have felt uneven. His visual choices could easily have felt alternately overdone and under. We realize later that a handful of early certain scenes which feel initially like sappy Americana are emotional red herrings. He simply knew, in spite of tried and true conventions, logic or practice, that his vision would work. And it is unqualified cinematic power.