I am pleasantly surprised that a movie made 44 years before my birth has influenced and pierced me so fully.
And I guess it’s because this movie tackled the theme of guilt and shame so well. It puts forth a personal reflection to the viewer. A very uncomfortable one. Too uncomfortable in fact to be faced at all.
That’s Sophie. She is an unconventional character for the storytelling of the Holocaust. Usually, when such a massive human tragedy is told or depicted, the right or wrong is pretty black and white. You were either the oppressed or the oppressor. You were either innocent or guilty.
But the writers of Sophie’s story depict an unexplored but very candid character of the ‘passive bystander.’
She was offered, pleaded with to take part in the resistance, to help the cause against the Regime. But she didn’t. She made the decision not to get involved in the resistance. Saying:
“I can’t. I cannot endanger my children… I do not want to get involved.”
Later in life, after the war, when she reflects on this and speaks of how some of those who carried out the resistance were slaughtered, she feebly states,
“They had courage.”
A goodness, a righteousness, she knew she only had the depravity of.
She knew her father’s actions were heinous. Calling for the extermination of a race considerably puts you on moral low ground. But for the life of her, she does not muster up the courage to say something to him.
Sophie does not do anything to oppose the regime whenever she’s given the chance. And when the regime can benefit her, she aligns herself with it.
When Sophie is a prisoner at Auschwitz, and she glimpses a chance of sympathy from an officer, she fills his ears by saying how her son is of the pure Aryan race. She uses the regime, gets on its side, if she sees that it benefits her.
A reasonable choice for survival at the time, but when the worst is over, she feels a heavy, drowning dread of making immoral choices.
Sophie is a deeply, deeply flawed character.
And what’s more interesting is how such a flawed character copes with the burden of it all.
The heavy, bleeding conscience, the guilt and the shame of making unforgivable decisions and unspeakable choices.
How does one go on living with this burden?
Frankly, I think how Sophie does it is the most understandable.
She is human. She is appalled by what she’s done. She does two things to cope.
1st, she enters and stays in an abusive relationship because she no longer thinks she is worthy of any sort of kindness. Abuse is what she deserves, and the only thing that may somehow pay the debt hanging over her.
Her abusive partner, Nathan, is Jewish. So it’s another form of payment in Sophie’s head that she should endure the torment of a Jewish man for her sins committed against his race.
Sophie cannot face her past. She only escapes from it.
So, 2nd, she fabricates story upon story. Rewriting the narrative because the real story was too inconvenient to face. Projecting and reaffirming an image of herself, she so wants to be true. But it isn’t. And she yearns to keep living behind the veil of lies and stories and moments of forced euphoria, because that’s her only protection against the horrible feelings that drown her.
This is too real a depiction of the viewer. We can find ourselves in every slight depiction of Sophie’s character.
Sophie’s adamancy about staying with an abusive partner and not facing her real past is pitiful.
She is scared of her past. She hides it so no one can see and judge the terrible person she thinks she is.
She hates herself and is utterly unforgiving of herself, and for this reason, is incapable of accepting actual kindness and care. She considers herself unworthy of it. It is painful and deeply uncomfortable for her to accept kind gestures. She is at peace only when she is hurt or mistreated. For in her mind, it is not mistreatment at all but an obligatory punishment she must endure for what she’s done.
It’s absolutely gut-wrenching.
She judges herself. We all do. She is tormented by her actions of the past. We all are. We shun away acts of kindness, because we loathe the idea that someone as unworthy as we are could be given such nice things.
For me, this not only incited a deep-rooted understanding but also had me drawing parallels with more modern media.
The perpetual anguish Sophie feels, and her innate sense to repel any compassion or tenderness sent her way, mark a striking resemblance to the character of Sarah in Francine Rivers’ “Redeeming Love.”
Sarah also has a tormented and troubled past. Because of her actions, she considers herself impure and inadequate for a good gentleman like Michael.
She rejects his kindness and repeatedly runs away from his care, compassion and true love because she believes she is not good enough for him, that he deserves a much better wife than her. So she returns to her past at every opportunity, believing that is the only place an impure and unlovable person like her belongs.
To Sarah’s:
“I’m not a good woman…. I never will be.”
Michael is:
“I don’t care what you’ve been. I care what you are.”
Sarah is not repelled by Michael himself, much like Sophie does not dislike Stingo; they both actually do appreciate and are attracted to these good, wholesome, love-and-care-giving gentlemen. What repels them is the very compassion they offer.
This love is not at all inviting or comforting for them. This is love is offensive, because they believe themselves undeserving of it.
And although Sarah is convinced by the end of her story, Sophie is not.
Sophie has reached a point of impenetrable self-loathing. She can’t stand herself anymore. She’s exhausted from putting up her facades.
We are able to see the unravelling layers of Sophie as she opens up to Stingo about her past. When Stingo asks her why she harmed herself, she reveals it was after the liberation. After she had been freed from Auschwitz, when she was safe in a refugee camp, that was when she tried to self-destruct.
“I knew that Christ had turned his face away from me and that only a Jesus who no longer cared for me could kill those people that I love and leave me alive with my shame.”
This emotional gut punch of a dialogue beautifully serves two purposes.
First, it shows the contrast of her relationship with a deity. Earlier in her life, when she was being sent to Auschwitz, the officer who had come to her and forced her to make the most breaking choice, saying:
“Wasn’t it Jesus who said, ‘ Let the little children come to me ‘?”
And of course, at that time, when she was using race and religion to better her odds of survival, she could only agree. This led to one of the most emotionally wrenching scenes ever put on camera. And of course an Oscar for best actress.
And second, was her closeness to death. Sophie is so strangely intrigued by the idea of welcoming death. She portrays a kind of intimacy with it. Like finally uniting with a friend, who would give peace, escape, and ample judgment. Just the kind of comfort she craves.
This is why she feels such thorough resonance when she comes upon Emily Dickinson.
“Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –”
And Sophie’s end is… fulfilling, I hope. She’s curled up in the arms of the man who’s her only escape in this world. And with him, she departs to the next, in what I think is the most poetic way, cinema could manage.
Ample make this bed,
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break,
Excellent and fair.
Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise’s yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.
Thank you for your reading time. I wish upon you just adequately compassionate relationships, and financially friendly therapy sessions.