Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. Out of Africa is the fifty-eighth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here.
“I had a farm in Africa,” Meryl Streep voices over repeatedly as if it is the opening line to one of Karen Blixen’s many imagined stories, pulled from thin air at the slightest prompt. Unlike her many tales that wowed Denys Finch-Hatton (Robert Redford,) Out of Africa and its recounting of the writer’s time managing a coffee farm in Kenya is a tough sit. Directed by Sydney Pollack, Out of Africa focuses on Streep’s Danish author and her experiences in East Africa around World War I. Wealthy but lacking in status, she marries a Swedish Baron (Klaus Maria Brandauer) out of convenience more than romance. The pair settle just outside Nairobi and begin farming coffee. While there Karen embarks on a number of ventures, including the building of a school for native children and a romance with Redford’s American hunter/safari guide. To call the film deliberately paced would be an understatement. Karen tends to her farm while her husband and her lover cycle in and out of her life between hunting trips. They sit by the fire and exchange stories. The listen to Mozart and stare off into the hills. It’s all very poetic and sweeping, but there is quite little of substance to the people of this film. Out of Africa also suffers from a tremendous perspective issue. Focusing on a materialistic European aristocrat and her dalliances with an American hunter minimizes the sweeping history of the people, animals and land on which they build their living. Karen looks out for the native people around her farm, but the characters themselves are and aspire to be little more than her servants in this telling. That much of the film is based on Blixen’s own writing gives a strong indication of how she thought of her neighbors and hired laborers. For what it is, Out of Africa is at least well performed. Streep carries the emotion of isolation and longing quite well. She is believable as a woman learning that she cannot buy herself love and admiration. Redford is far more sparse across the totality of the film. He is little more than a roguish object of desire for Blixen, too aloof to be grounded in any sort of reality. Still the actor is able to will his character into something more through charm alone. Even the production falls a bit flat, especially considering the major role scenery and location play in the final product. Shots of the valleys and hills of Kenya are beautiful but rarely are they allowed to breath and soak into the imagination of the audience. More often we see the Ngong hills overlayed onto green screen behind the actors, cheapening the effect. Out of Africa ends up being far less than the sum of its parts, failing to make the most of two tremendously talented actors and the lovely scenery of the land on which they filmed. Much of this can be blamed on a story that lacks emotional pull and a script that struggles to invent any within those confines. What results is a rather long, often wonder-less, film moving at a difficultly slow pace. 4/10
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