There is a moment in Out of Africa where Denys Finch-Hatten (Robert Redford) washes the hair of Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep). While on Safari attempting to see, perhaps for the last time, wild and un-tamed Africa, Karen manages to mess her hair up to the point that she cannot brush it. ‘I can fix that,’ Denys says, and minutes later he is reciting ‘rhyme of the ancient mariner’ to her, and pouring water over her soapy hair while she opens her mouth slightly in serenity.
‘He prayeth well, who loveth well, both man and bird and beast.’ Denys finishes.
The melding of their unbridled, heart-burning passion for each other as well as the subtle recognition of the beauty of africa at that time, the harmony and serenity between man and bird and beast, is the ultimate message in Out of Africa. At once one of the most romantic, emotionally charged and moving love stories as well as an elegaic, slightly melancholy ode to an Africa that is now lost and obscured behind violence and tourism and modernization.
Out of Africa will change your life. I am not even kidding, and i most certainly am not exaggerating. This is the kind of movie that comes once in a generation, superbly well-made, excellently acted, and all against a backdrop so jaw-droppingly stunning that it alone is enough to bring you to tears, if the storyline itself can't do that. It is based on the memoirs of Karen Blixen of her time owning and running a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills, her marriage to the philandering Baron, her romance and affair with the wanderer Denys, a man of erudition and grace, and also her growing love and affection for her home country.
Anyone who has read Blixen's original book, or indeed, anyone who has ever read a memoir, will understand the difficulty in translating something that is essentially non-linear to film. For a memoir is, by very definition, a collection of memories glued together with their only common thread being, ultimately, that they belong to author. Blixen's writing is stunning, lyrical and poetic in a way that you don't expect of someone for whom english was not their first language. But it is also very inconsistent, not in an annoying way that throws you off, but it does make for a dilemma. Where does one start? chronologically? by each moment? by character, or people? By the African landmarks that she often frames events around?
The film, screenplay by Kurt Luedtke, captures so perfectly and completely the spirit of the book. Yes, there may be some plot discrepancies, and yes the film is more of a 'love story'... i find these days films often are, but the spirit of blixen's memoir, that of the magical and arresting beauty of africa, that of the follies of life, and indeed, love, are caught and displayed in the film in crystal perfection. The film conjures up for your eyes a feast, a lovingly filmed postcard to an Africa, particularly Kenya, that by all accounts was supremely paradisiacal.
While Karen and Denys may ostensibly be the romantic focus, Pollack is one for making films that are elegant and sophisticated, languorous like a summer day, and interspersed between Karen's recollections and narrative voice are some of the most stunning arial shots of Africa i've ever seen. The savannah stretching out as far as the eye can see, long and lean and white, so white, and mountains rising up to meet the sky, graceful animals leaping in bounds, so high from the ground it seems impossible... the simple loveliness in rushes and muddy waterholes and sand and seas and sight, a loveliness that has none of the wet richness of european landscape, but is no less incredible. the kind of images that belong in paintings, in impressionist brush strokes, quick and messy, but so incredibly arrestingly beautiful.
And aside from Africa, the film creates two leads whose chemistry is unbelievable. We all know that Streep is an amazing actress, and in 1985, the time of the film, she was consistently sending forth performances worthy of oscar. Karen is a fiercely spirited and intelligent woman, who at first is at odds with the segregated, patriarchal and environmentally hostile Kenyan landscape. But as her husband continually leaves her alone on the farm she grows subsistent, and develops an affection for Africa that is persistent and everlasting. 'I tried to remember the colours of Africa,' Karen muses, at one moment of the film when she returns to her homeland of Denmark. And Streep is so restrained with those words, and yet they are so emotionally charged, you too strain your mind to conjure up some of the african colours in your head. the ochre of the dirt, the jewel blue of the blinding sky, that yellowy green of the plant-life.
Denys, on the other hand, is a character for the ages. Bear in mind that everyone in the film is based on real people, and so although Denys' strong sense of independence, his unwillingness to be tied down, his magical charm and natural grace, they all may seem trite. But not just by his lover Karen's pen, but by many other, Denys seemed a remarkable man. There is a bit in the memoirs where Blixen writes that the land seemed to sing when he was around, that when she heard his car on the drive to her farm she could hear the land cry out in joy. I'm not even a huge Robert Redford fan, give me Jeremy Irons any day, but by god i would drop anyone for his Denys Finch-Hatten. Not every actor could do justice to this character, who, as wikipedia so philosophically puts it 'belongs everwhere and nowhere', and certainly many of his outbursts towards the end of the film where he says to Karen that she doesn't 'need' him, she only 'wants' him, that he needs his space, he can't be tamed... that kind of typical commitment-phobe drivel from men can come across arrogant. But you believe him when he says it, you see that he's not being spoilt and immature but rather that it is his way of trying to stay individual and liberated in the way he sees the true spirit of Africa. He identifies with the land like no-one else, and as such wants himself to be just like it: wild, un-tamed, free...
But nothing can stay perfect forever. Just like how Karen and Denys' romance becomes muddied when she berates him for not wanting to 'have' her in the way she wants, the way where you give your heart to the other person. 'I've learnt that there are some things worth having, but they come at a price,' Karen says to him, 'And i want to be one of them.' Their difference in temperaments, the passionate and romantic Karen who wants to give herself, and all of herself, to her lover, and Denys, forever his own person, unwilling to be 'owned' or captured by anything.
And just like that the serenity of Africa withers away too. Throughout the film Denys and Karen see the degradation of Kenyan society, firstly through the great war in which Africa is divided up at the petty whims of European colonists and the native africans further disengaged from land that is rightfully theirs. Later, Denys is forced into safari work, showing off africa as it slowly becomes homogenised and captured to prying tourists. The dreamy rhythm of life in Kenya, focussed around the rain season and the calm that it brings, is lost as more and more settlers flock to the land seeking riches and fortunes. There is a sense of wistfulness in the way the camera pans so slowly over man and bird and beast, how beautiful it once was, we think, how sad that this peacefulness is now gone.
I know it sounds like i've ruined the whole film for you, but i really haven't. There is so much more than i can even put down on paper, the film is such a rich tale of love and change and discovery. And there are too many moments to describe my favourite. There's one bit where the newly arrived Karen sees that she doesn't quite fit in, in a society where the whites are foreigners she is a foreign white. A new acquaintance is enchanted by her, and remarks with nostalgia that her perfume is the same as a girl he used to take to dances in silk dresses back at oxford. Karen offers forth her wrist, and the man tentatively, curiously, sniffs. 'No... it's very nice. but not the same.' he concludes.
Another of my favourites comes about half way through the film, when Denys takes her up into his little plane. As they zoom across the sky, the majesty of the serengheti spread beneath them in all its regal glory, Karen reaches a hand behind her and Denys grasps it, not very safe, i mean, who was steering the plane? but very romantic. And you realise the significance of the opening lines of the film:
'He even took the Gramophone on safari. Three rifles, supplies for a month and Mozart.
He began our friendship with a gift. And later, not long before Tsavo, he gave me another.
An incredible gift. A glimpse of the world through God's eye. And I thought...
"Yes, I see. This is the way it was intended."
You will cry, and cry, and cry. I know i did!
And then you will smile at the memory of what i guarantee will be one of the most moving 2 hours you ever spend watching a film. There are only a handful of films that i feel this strongly about, atonement, titanic, brokeback mountain.... and out of africa.
X
