Romancefest 7: Out of Africa

OUT OF AFRICA is one of those movies that has meant something to me almost my entire life even though I never really sat down and watched it until recently.

One of my earliest movie-going memories is the time my parents took me to OUT OF AFRICA when I was either 4 or 5, much too young for a grown up drama that's just shy of 3 hours. I guess they couldn't find a babysitter. According to my mom, I was well behaved. I imagine I must have just slept through it. But, I lived most of my life with a vague memory of the film, formed well before I knew who the stars Meryl Streep or Robert Redford were.

If I were to romanticize or mythologize my life, I'd say my parents taking me to movies most parents wouldn't have taken their kids to was a direct cause of my life long interest in the art of filmmaking. So, in that sense, OUT OF AFRICA is more important to me than it really should be.

Anyway, it's the second Sydney Pollack directed / Robert Redford starring romance I've seen this month and the fourth one in which one of the main characters dies. By the way, I finally realized what makes Redford so attractive. He turns every sentence into a question. This makes him seem all mysterious and silent and humble all at the same time. You can ask him a yes or no question, he'll turn the answer into a question.

"Hey, Robert Redford, do you want to go to McDonald's?"

"No?"

See.

The story concerns a wealthy Danish Baroness, Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep) who fears she'll never get married so she strikes a deal with her friend Bror (Klaus Maria Brandauer) to enter into a marriage of convenience in order to free up some of the old family money. The film takes place right around the beginning of the first World War when there was an influx of European settlers and colonists traveling to Africa to tame the frontier. Karen and Bror travel to Africa with the agreement they'll start a cattle farm, but it ends up being a coffee plantation.

Once in Africa, Bror reveals himself to be somewhat shiftless and given to partying, drinking and running around with women. He spends most of his time out of the house and makes it clear he's not planning to help with the farm. Karen tries to make things work and busies herself setting up the farm, getting the local tribe to help her out along the way.

It's not long before rugged individualist Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford) shows up. He makes a living as a big game hunter, and later as a tour guide. As Karen falls in love with Africa, she also begins to fall in love with Denys, whose romantic reverence of the wilderness and whose own independence attracts her. Denys is drawn towards Karen, as well, as she proves to be more than a match for her new environment and pretty much the only industrious colonist in the entire film. But, he's also drawn to the wilderness and doesn't want to settle down.

I guess there are two romances here. The first one is really between Karen and Africa. She falls in love with the whole country, at least as she sees it, and in her narration and the performance by Meryl Streep, the movie does not shy away from the complex issues here. When you fall in love with a place, you want to learn everything about it. The more you learn, the more you love. But, you're still an outsider. When do you become a part of the place you love instead of being a tourist? Will the place every love you back? Is it indifferent to you, with its own customs and stories, not really needing you to come along and idealize it? Does it matter?

Two of the most effective sequences in the film deal with Karen leaving Africa: there's a montage early on in which Karen is forced to leave the country for medical treatment. Instead of following her home to Denmark and showing scenes of Karen missing Africa, we see shots of familiar settings in Africa, only without Karen -- her dressing table, the grounds of the plantation. Without her there, it doesn't seem the same. Later, towards the end of the film, we get a drawn out series of farewells, but the saddest farewell is between Karen and Africa in which she wonders -- will the people remember her? Will the land remember her? Will she ever mean as much to Africa as it meant to her?

But, there's also the romance between Redford and Streep, and that one seems to be mostly about independence. It's summed up in the following exchange:

Redford says, "I'm getting used to living with things."

Streep says, "I'm getting used to living without things."

Each of their personal growth deals with their attitude towards their independent selves -- they have to decide whether or not their identities are defined by other people. Redford has to learn not to be alone, Streep has to learn that being alone is okay. They meet briefly in the middle and then blow by each other. I think they see themselves in each other, even if they might not want to admit it or maybe even don't realize it. I guess that's how a lot of relationships are -- like looking in a mirror while trying not to be caught looking in the mirror.

After all this typing I still haven't mentioned the music (John Barry) and the cinematography (David Watkin) -- both beautiful. And, the central performances are good, along with a few standout supporting actors, most notably the stoic steward, Farah (Malick Bowens) who quietly becomes one of Karen's closest friends and has a few of the most heart breaking scenes in the film, saying a lot with very few lines and an expression that attempts to avoid betraying emotion.

But, Africa does most of the heavy lifting, itself. The cinematography wouldn't be so beautiful without the scenery -- neither would the music. When the plane flies over the water and the flamingos take flight, you have to thank Africa for making that possible. When the lions lounge in the grass, when the sun sets, same thing.

I was surprised to learn the film is based on the life of a real woman of the same name as the main character who lived all of these adventures and then wrote stories about them. She must have been a hell of a lady, which I guess means Denys was one hell of a man.