Out of Africa

Epic and splendid movie. Gorgeous score. Stellar cinematography, brilliant story, beautifully acted. One of my favorites.

Out of Africa, (1985). ”I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” One of the best-known, best-loved opening lines of any movie. Thus starts Sydney Pollack’s Oscar-winning epic romantic drama, beloved around the world, OUT OF AFRICA, based on the classic book by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), of the same name that opens with the same unforgettable sentence. Also other writings of Dinesen’s, and Judith Thurman’s monumental biography of the author. Dinesen’s book and movie concern Denmark native Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep) , who enters into a marriage of convenience with womanizing Swedish baron Bror Blixen. Then, hoping to make a better life, the couple, in the early twentieth century, moves to Nairobi, in the British colony of Kenya, where they establish a coffee plantation that Karen eventually must run on her own. Karen is no pushover, but her life is complicated by troubles on the plantation, World War I, her insistence on schooling the natives and her catching syphilis, then often deadly, from her husband. And then she falls passionately in love with free-spirited hunter Denys Finch Hutton, well-educated handsome son of an earl, (Robert Redford) who can't be tied down.Director Pollack is also well-known for the wise comedy TOOTSIE. His lush African period drama earned seven Academy Awards, including statues for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography. I haven’t the skills – who has—to do justice to this great biography/ period drama based on classic literature, and I doubt the readers need those encomiums from me, so I will content myself with a few more sentences on the film proper. To begin with, of course, the cast is outstanding: multi-Oscar winning/nominated Meryl Streep as Karen; Pollack’s lifelong friend Robert Redford as Denys; Klaus Maria Brandauer as Bror. Also some outstanding British actors: a young Michael Kitchen, Michael Gough, Suzanna Hamilton, Rachel Kempson, Graham Crowden, Leslie Philips. Some outstanding African actors: Malick Bowens, Joseph Thiaka, Stephen Kinyanjui., Mike Bugara, Iman and Job Seda. The wonderfully evocative score by John Barry that delivers the soul of the great Continent of Africa. And, of course, Africa itself, unnamed costar of the film: Pollack at one point says “If the Garden of Eden is anywhere, it is surely here.”What I can talk about is that I went to Kenya last month to see all this for myself. Saw the Masai Mera, thousands of animals, every breed. The hippo-filled rivers that once ran sparkling clear. The mountains. Learned that Nairobi, once a dusty little railroad town, now proud capital of former British colony Kenya, has an area called Karen after Blixen, another called Muithaiga, after the club the settlers went to to play golf, drink, dance and get into trouble. I saw Blixen’s house, so evocative, much as represented on screen. With old Victrola and vinyl records. And a tiny kitchen lacking electricity and running water, in which her incomparable chef prepared a feast she served the Prince of Wales: the menu still hangs in the house. And some coffee plants. The machinery used on the farm. Saw the still in existence Muthiaga Club, though only from a distance, as it is now a pricey private golf club. Managed a daytime plane ride over the Mera, still incomparably beautiful. Then and now, the population: Masai, Kikiyu, the occasionally tall beautiful Somali – like former model Iman—all speaking Swahili. Learned a word in Swahili: dawa. Medicine. I wasn’t that well. A notable Indian colony then and now. And now, more Chinese than there ever were, which is a subject for another time.If somehow you have never seen this film, you must, particularly if you’re female. Just have a box of tissues nearby.

I had my “African period” once, when it was so near. Five years, 1979-84, and save for a month in Morocco (which some might say does not count) in 1990, I have not been back…save by books. More recently I’ve read books by Africans themselves, like Moses Isegawa and Alain Mabanckou. In the “African period” I read mainly books by those of European descent. There were those by males, Alan Paton, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Ernest Hemingway. It was three women however who helped put the “awe” into my appreciation for Africa. Each got some dirt under their fingernails – they were farmers. Each inspired visits with words of their experiences. Olive Schreiner wrote “The Story of an African Farm.” Elspeth Huxley wrote “The Flame Trees of Thika.” And Karen Blixen, under the pen name, Isak Dinesen, wrote “Out of Africa,” which was first published in 1937 and commenced with the subject line.Sidney Pollack directed the movie, which was released in 1985. Two big-named Hollywood stars, Meryl Streep, who played Baroness Blixen and Robert Redford, with his perpetually perplexed expression, played the independent English hunter, Denys Finch Hatton, who would eventually become the paramour of Blixen. Klaus Maria Brandauer, played Blixen’s philandering husband, who gifted her with some syphilis, back in the pre-antibiotic days when the poison, mercury, was the treatment, which worked in Blixen’s case. The two were eventually divorced. And Africa, well, it played itself and Pollack has his camerapersons reinforce the “awe.”Can watching a movie that sorta glorified the colonial period be “politically correct” nowadays? Well, at one level, I don’t care, but I think that Pollack did a good job of showing a lot of the warts, shorn of the glory. Blixen, for example, is not allowed into the men’s only club. And as she must have done in real life, she did go to considerable lengths to ensure that the natives were given a better deal, on land that was once theirs, as she dramatically states on her knees.I liked watching the interactions between Streep and Redford, depicting relationships from the days when, as Bob Dylan once sung, in “Tom Thumb’s Blues”: “And you try not to go to her too soon.” Best to make sure you wait at least an hour, sometimes a metaphorical one. And I loved the scene of confrontation between Blixen’s husband and Denys when the former said: “You might have asked, Denys.” Redford comes back with: “I did, and she said Yes.”Furthering the realism, shorn of the glory, as Marguerite Duras attested, in far off Indochine, many colonists were far from wealthy and lead rather hardscrabble existences. The one off-note in the film was the impressive stone home the Blixens lived in, almost certainly much better than the initial homes built before 1913. As Huxley says of her experience: we built a house of grass and ate off a damask cloth spread between packing cases. As for Blixen, assorted disasters on the farm eventually forced her to return to Denmark, in 1931, destitute.A good movie that evoked a bit of nostalgia for my own experiences of four decades ago, and a yearning to return to the continent. Algeria might be a good start, even though some might say that doesn’t count either. 5-stars for Africa, the awe, and a couple very good actors.

READ THE BOOK!

Beautiful story great acting