For many, liberation did not end the trauma of the Holocaust. Alan Pakula’s Sophie’s Choice, an adaptation of William Styron’s novel about the after-effects of the Holocaust, gave Hollywood one of film’s most memorable embodiments of survivor’s guilt. Sophie’s Choice is an increasing upsetting tale operating in flashbacks to tell Sophie’s story through the curiosity of Stingo, a younger writer who recently moved to Brooklyn and was befriended by Sophie and her mentally unstable lover, Nathan. The flashbacks during the movie rewind the story to periods before, during, and after Sophie’s incarnation at Auschwitz. With each new story that she tells, they become colder, drearier, more violent and disturbing than the last and provides the opportunity to peer into how the ripples of Sophie’s experience while imprisoned have spread and been magnified throughout her postwar life. The deep and tragic emotions that are felt during this movie are made possible by the low-key lightings and scene coloring, camera angles, and tight framing, and makeup that matched the heavy moods that the sequences aimed to …show more content…
The low light, tight frame, and camera angle on Sophie’s face allows the audience to focus solely on her and her alone. There are no distractions in the background suggesting that this is a trivial part of not only the movie, but also Sophie’s character. Her make-up is pale and soft with a red lip for a pop of color in the scene. She has a washed out complexion full of weariness that is contrasted by an image of her before the concentration camp where she looks healthy and young. The icy blue light reinforces her self-image as a walking corpse. Her experience is written all over her face and the audience can see that she, in fact, is not better off after the war