Out of Africa' is a film that struggles to impress. It is loosely based on the memoirs of Danish aristocrat Karen Dinesen (Meryl Streep), whose failed social endeavors at home drove her to a platonic marriage to a Baron (Klaus Maria Brandauer) and to an eighteen-year exile in colonial Kenya. The wide skies of Africa enlarged Dinesen's horizons, allowing her to explore the limits of her endurance through business venturing, friendship, and ultimately romance with wildlife hunter Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford).
The components of cinematic success are all there: erotic triangles, colonial Africa, exotic natives, even war, illness and bereavement. Paradoxically, after the first twenty minutes something goes terribly wrong, causing this over-ambitious film to evaporate into plain meaninglessness. The source of this unfortunate debacle is to be found in the substandard screenplay, which tends to revolve endlessly around itself, while stubbornly refusing to lift the story and the characters off the ground. Fine recitals by Streep (featuring a superb Nordic accent), and Michael Kitchen (as Berkeley) are not dynamic enough to conceal the film's fatal contradictions: Dinesen is a feminist spirit whose self-confidence is dependent on the men in her life; colonized Kenya is a sanitized paradise where noble savages' know their place; and where white colonialists are well-meaning philanthropists with imperfections that have hardly any impact outside of their narrow bwana' circle.
In conclusion, do not allow yourself to be deceived by the film's Academy Award credentials. This is mediocre cinema -the kind which pleases the eye, but is all empty calories. 4.7 stars out of 10.
The components of cinematic success are all there: erotic triangles, colonial Africa, exotic natives, even war, illness and bereavement. Paradoxically, after the first twenty minutes something goes terribly wrong, causing this over-ambitious film to evaporate into plain meaninglessness. The source of this unfortunate debacle is to be found in the substandard screenplay, which tends to revolve endlessly around itself, while stubbornly refusing to lift the story and the characters off the ground. Fine recitals by Streep (featuring a superb Nordic accent), and Michael Kitchen (as Berkeley) are not dynamic enough to conceal the film's fatal contradictions: Dinesen is a feminist spirit whose self-confidence is dependent on the men in her life; colonized Kenya is a sanitized paradise where noble savages' know their place; and where white colonialists are well-meaning philanthropists with imperfections that have hardly any impact outside of their narrow bwana' circle.
In conclusion, do not allow yourself to be deceived by the film's Academy Award credentials. This is mediocre cinema -the kind which pleases the eye, but is all empty calories. 4.7 stars out of 10.