What is the point of this movie? beautiful scenery, nice dialog (what there is of it) but its just seems to be a story of a remarkable woman who makes bad choices all her life. should be called “The Duchess without a clue”
This isn’t really a general question. Off to IMHO.
bibliophage
moderator, GQ
Hmmm, I never thought of it that way. I see what you mean about there not being one central theme, but I have always thought it was about the draw that Africa (or the land)has on people. The way Meryl (can’t remember character name) is always drawn back there, the way Denys (Robert Redford) and her husband (I never understood that relationship) are drawn to the hunt. Almost like the land itself is the central character of the movie, everything that happens to these people is because of how they feel about the land. Maybe the heat and mosquitos rot their brains or something.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but I think HelloKitty nailed it. ISTR a scene where Meryl’s character, Karen Blixen, wanted to build a school and teach the local children English.
Redford’s character protested, saying he didn’t want them turned into “little Englishmen” (Redford’s character was English, although he didn’t even try to do the accent).
So I think the general idea was about Africa as the Europeans found it, and how that Africa would inevitably be destroyed by colonialism and the invasion of the 20th century.
It was a true story. The character Karen Blixen was based on the writer Isak Dinesen (sp?), who wrote about herself as Karen. So if the story doesn’t seem as gripping as fiction to you, it might be because it isn’t.
maybe her life is parallelling Africa’s plight. all the trials in her life go bad and she misses the only chance for a good ending when she went for Redford instead of his friend. Africa was divided up and colonized no matter what anybody did. I always have a problem with these stories that show a continent as a people while ignoring the people. If they would have showed the older villagers starving to death or the young dying because of simple infections… but no its always “everything here is perfect until civilization screwed it up”.
What I want to know is how on earth did this win Best Picture over The Color Purple?
Isak Dinesen was a pen name. Karen Blixen was her real name. I believe in Nairobi there is a neighborhood called Karen, built on the location of her former farm.
Her husband was the Baron von Blixen, I suppose Karen was a Baroness, fat lot of good it did her.
Welcome to every British, French, and New Zealand film made for the past 20 years.
You know, when I was 12, my parents told me I should see “Out of Africa.” I asked them what was good about it and the only thing they could come up with was, “It has great scenery.” I mean, I could just a slide show if I wanted great scenery! I did actually see the movie, but the only thing I can remember about it is that the woman grows coffee, gets syphilis, and goes home.
The story is that the Academy had some grudge against Steven Spielberg that year.