1985 Out of Africa


"I had a farm in Africa."

This is a good movie, but a little melancholy in tone for my taste, from start to finish.  I guess that's what happens when a movie is about a person looking back at the best time of their life and what they have lost.  Meryl Streep was amazing.  She really can do any accent.  I think this is one of her best performances.

Karen arrives in Africa to marry Bror.

She plays Baroness Karen Blixen, and the movie is based on her memoirs.

At 28, she is dissatisfied with life after parting ways with her lover.  She proposes marriage to her lover's brother, Baron Bror Blixen, a friend of hers.  They are not in love, but she wants to be married, she wants a title, and she wants to do something with her life.  He needs money, so she tells him to marry her for her money.  She says if they marry, they can move to Africa (what becomes Kenya) and start a cattle farm, which he agrees to, though he alters the plan and arranges for a coffee farm instead.  I guess this seemed like a good idea to her at the time, but please, if you are ever in the same situation, don't do this.  It's never a good idea.  It quickly becomes apparent that Karen is not really cut out for a marriage of convenience.  She wants Bror around, she wants an affectionate, monogamous marriage, and he is not going to offer that, which causes her unhappiness.  His extra-marital affairs lead to her contracting syphilis, and not long after her recovery, they separate.  See what I mean?  Get dumped=Marry someone that doesn't love you=Get syphilis.  Don't do it.  It's not worth it.  Eat some chocolate, move on.

She falls in love with game hunter Denys Finch Hatton, Robert Redford, who loves wild Africa: the culture of the tribesmen, the animals, the openness and the freedom.  He is an existentialist, living from day to day, renouncing ownership, demanding complete freedom:

Negotiating with a local chief.

Karen: When you go away... you don't always go on safari, do you?  Just want to be away.
Denys: It's not meant to hurt you.
Karen: It does.
Denys: I'm with you because I choose to be with you.  I don't want to live someone else's idea of how to live.  Don't ask me to do that.  I don't want to find out one day that I'm at the end of someone else's life.

This drives her crazy, of course, as it would pretty much any woman.  Come on, what the hell does that even mean?  He wants to come and go as he pleases -to be with her when he feels like it, to leave when he wants to be alone, to have no accountability to her, and absolutely no marriage.  She wants the opposite.  She wants to feel loved and needed, and to feel that, she needs a commitment ("I have learned a thing that you haven't.  There are some things worth having but they come at a price and I want to be one of them."), so their relationship is ultimately doomed, in spite of their love for each other.  Denys is very likeable, but he drove me a little crazy.  I mean, come on Denys, of course you don't want to commit.  You're a guy.  But she's a woman, she wants a commitment -is this really such a new idea?  Don't use your fancy words and lofty ideals to side-step her needs.  It's the choice many a man has had to make -stay a bachelor or marry the woman.  Don't dance around the issue, just decide.  Or, as my mother says (pardon her French), "Shit or get off the pot."  But he just sticks with the whole I want to be with you, but "I won't be closer to you and I won't love you more because of a piece of paper" argument (women love that one) until she gives up on him.  The best he'll offer is: "I'll mate for life.  One day at a time."  Again, what the hell does that MEAN?  I feel her frustration.  It's like some sort of exhausting mind game.  Parting ways is not easy for him, though:

Denys: You've ruined it for me, you know.
Karen: Ruined what?
Denys: Being alone.

Thank goodness Tyler wasn't this way -I saddled my stallion in a matter of months, but then, we've never needed to be apart from each other like Denys seems to need space from Karen.  I'm easily as clingy as her, but Tyler is a saint and puts up with me.  Of course, I am a delight to be around.

Karen experiences both great joy and great sorrow in Africa.  She forms close bonds with the people, loves working the farm, loves the beauty of the country, and is happy when she can be with Denys.  She and Denys really experience some beautiful moments together, flying over the countryside in his plane, going on safari, and just being together at her house, her telling him stories, him reciting poetry, listening to music.  But she also struggles with the farm and her finances, and with the hurt she feels over her failed marriage and her perceived rejection by Denys.  She experiences loneliness and defeat.

Karen's coffee farm.

I enjoyed watching Karen exhibit great courage during her time in Africa.  When she arrives, she seems like a fish out of water, but she adapts.  She crosses dangerous territory to bring supplies to her husband.  She faces down a couple of lions, showing steady nerves.  She runs a business almost entirely on her own in a male dominated world, and very nearly makes a success of it before a fire destroys her crops and forces her to return to Denmark and life as an author.

It would've been nice if she could've caught a break, either professionally or romantically.

The scenery is gorgeous, the animals are beautiful.  Meryl Streep's performance is probably the biggest highlight of the movie.