Out of Africa (film)

Plot

Karen Dinesen recalls her life in Africa where in 1913 she, as an unmarried wealthy Danish woman is spurned by her Swedish nobleman lover, went to Nairobi, British East Africa to complete a marriage of convenience with her lover's brother, Baron Bror Blixen (Klaus Maria Brandauer). Bror has gone through his money and is reduced to seducing the servant girls so with Dinesen they plan to establish a dairy cattle farm. En route to Nairobi, she meets Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford), a local big-game hunter.

It is Farah that greets her at the train station; Bror is no where to be found. So, at Muthaiga Club, she enters the men's bar to ask for him, and she is asked to leave. Karen and Bror marry before the day is out in a "long" ceremony. As Baroness Blixen she learns that Bror has changed their agreed upon plan, to instead establish a coffee farm. However, his interest is more in running big game hunting on safari than at management of the farm.

Eventually, Karen does develop feelings for Bror but she contracts from him syphilis during First World War. Bror agrees to manage the farm while she takes treatment (Salvarsan) in Denmark. When she returns, he resumes working on safari. They begin to live separately.

The relationship between Karen and Denys develops and he comes to live with her. Karen and Bror get a divorce. When Denys invites a mutual woman friend on safari, Karen comes to realize that Denys does not want the same type of relationship she seeks. He assures her that when he is with her he wants to be with her, and that a marriage is immaterial to their relationship. He moves out.

The farm eventually yields a good harvest, but a fire puts Karen in financial straits. Karen prepares for her departure from Kenya Colony to Denmark by appealing for land for her Kikuyu workers to allow them to stay together, and by selling at a rummage sale the things that she will not take with her to Denmark.

Before the rummage sale, Denys visits the empty house and Karen comments that the house should have been so all along; Denys says that he was just getting used to her things. They agree that the coming Friday Denys will fly her to Mombasa; Karen to continue on to Denmark. Friday comes; Bror arrives to tell her that Denys' biplane has crashed and burned.

Following the funeral, she goes to Denys' club to complete arrangements for managing any mail that in her absence may arrive; the members extend to her a toast. At the train station she says goodbye to Farah, then turns back to ask him to say her name.

Karen later became an author and a storyteller, writing about her experiences in Africa, though she never was to return.

Production

The film tells the story as a series of six loosely coupled episodes from Karen's life, intercut with her narration. The final two narrations, the first a reflection on Karen's experiences in Kenya and the second a description of Finch Hatton's grave, were taken from her book Out of Africa, while the others have been written for the film in imitation of her very lyrical writing style. The pace of this film is often rather slow, reflecting Blixen's book, "Natives dislike speed, as we dislike noise..."

Klaus Maria Brandauer was director Sydney Pollack's only choice for Bror Blixen, even having trouble to pick a replacement when it appeared that Brandauer's schedule would prevent him from participating. Robert Redford became Finch Hatton once Redford thought he had a charm no British actor could convey. Meryl Streep landed the part by showing up for her meeting with the director wearing a low-cut blouse and a push-up bra, as Pollack had originally thought the actress did not have enough sex appeal for the role.

Out of Africa was filmed using descendants of several people of the Kikuyu tribe who are named in the book, near the actual Ngong Hills outside Nairobi, but not inside of Karen's (second) three-bedroom house "Mbagathi" (now the Karen Blixen Museum). The filming took place in her first house "Mbogani", close to the museum, which is a dairy today. A substantial part of the filming took place in the Scott house, which is still occupied, and a recreation of 1910s Nairobi built across a year. The scenes depicting the Government House were shot at Nairobi School with the administration block providing a close replica of British colonial governors' residences. The scenes set in Denmark were actually filmed in Surrey, England.

Differences between the film and real life events

This film quotes the start of the book, "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills" [p. 3], and Karen recites, "He prayeth well that loveth well both man and bird and beast" from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which becomes the epitaph inscribed on Finch Hatton's grave marker [p. 370].

This film differs significantly from the book, leaving out the devastating locust swarm, some local shootings, and Karen's writings about the German army. The production also downplays the size of her 4,000 acres (16 km²) farm, with 800 Kikuyu workers and an 18-oxen wagon. Scenes show Karen as owning only one dog, but actually, she had two similar dogs named Dawn and Dusk.

The film also takes liberties with Denys and Karen's romance. They met at a hunting club, not in the plains. Denys was away from Kenya for two years on military assignment in Egypt, which is not mentioned. Denys took up flying and began to lead safaris after he moved in with Karen. The film also ignores the fact that Karen was pregnant at least once with Finch Hatton's child, but she suffered from miscarriages. Furthermore, Denys was an English aristocrat, but this fact was downplayed by the hiring of the actor Robert Redford, an inarguably all-American actor who had previously worked with Pollack. When Redford accepted the contract to play, he did so fully intending to play him as an Englishman. Pollack, however, felt an English accent would be distracting for the audience, and told Redford to use his real accent. In fact, Redford reportedly had to re-record some of his lines from early takes in the filming, in which he still spoke with a trace of English accent.

The title scenes of the film show the main railway, from Mombasa to Nairobi, as travelling through the Kenyan Rift Valley, on the steep back side of the actual Ngong Hills. However, the real railway track is located on the higher, opposite side of the Ngong Hills. The passenger car was actually a small combination office / sleeper that was originally used by supervisors during the building of the Uganda Railway and was the actual car from which a man was taken and killed by a marauding lioness.

The film shows Karen reciting from the poem "To an Athlete Dying Young" at Finch Hatton's funeral, but there is no mention of this in the book.

Soundtrack

The music for Out of Africa was composed and conducted by veteran English composer John Barry. The score included a number of outside pieces such as Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and African traditional songs. The soundtrack garnered Barry an Oscar for Best Original Score and sits in fifteenth place in the American Film Institute's list of top 25 American film scores. The soundtrack was released through MCA Records and features 12 tracks of score at a running time of just over thirty-three minutes. A rerecording conducted by Joel McNeely and performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra was released in 1997 through Varèse Sarabande and features eighteen tracks of score at a running time just under thirty-nine minutes.

MCA Records release

1. "Main Title (I Had a Farm in Africa)" (3:14)
2. "I'm Better at Hello (Karen's Theme I)" (1:18)
3. "Have You Got a Story For Me" (1:14)
4. "Mozart Clarinet Concerto K622" Adagio (2:49) by Jack Brymer and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields with Neville Marriner
5. "Under the Sun" (4:21)
6. "Safari" (2:44)
7. "Karen's Journey/Siyawe" (4:50) contains traditional African music
8. "Flying Over Africa" (3:25)
9. "I Had a Compass from Karen (Karen's Theme II)" (2:31)
10. "Alone on the Farm" (1:56)
11. "Let the Rest of the World Go By" (3:17) – by Ernest R. Ball and J. Keirn Brennan
12. "If I Know a Song of Africa (Karen's Theme III)" (2:12)
13. "End Title (You Are Karen)" (4:01)

Varèse Sarabande Re-Recording

1. "I Had a Farm (Main Title)" (3:12)
2. "Alone on the Farm" (1:00)
3. "Karen and Denys" (0:48)
4. "Have You Got a Story For Me" (1:21)
5. "I'm Better at Hello" (1:24)
6. "Under the Sun" (4:21)
7. Mozart Clarinet Concerto K622" Adagio (7:39) by Jack Brymer and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields with Neville Marriner
8. "Karen's Journey Starts" (3:41)
9. "Karen's Journey Ends" (1:00)
10. "Karen's Return from Border" (1:33)
11. "Karen Builds a School" (1:19)
12. "Harvest" (2:02)
13. "Sunset" (7:19)
14. "Love" (8:16)
15. "Safari" (2:35)
16. "Karen's Journey/Siyawe" (4:50)
17. "I Had a Compass from Karen (Karen's Theme II)" (2:31)
18. "Flight Over Africa" (2:41)
19. "Beach at Night" (0:58)
20. "You'll Keep Me Then" (0:58)
21. "Let the Rest of the World Go By" (3:17)
22. "If I Knew a Song of Africa" (2:23)
23. "You Are Karen M'Sabu" (1:17)
24. "Petting my Cow (4:34)
25. "Out of Africa (End Credits)" (2:49)

Reception

Out of Africa has received mixed reviews from critics, where today the film currently holds a 56% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 44 reviews with the consensus: "Though lensed with stunning cinematography and featuring a pair of winning performances from Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, Out of Africa suffers from excessive length and glacial pacing." Out of Africa is one of only a handful of films -- the others are The Greatest Show on Earth, Cimarron, The Broadway Melody, and Cavalcade -- that won the Academy Award for Best Picture but currently have "rotten" (below 60%) scores on Rotten Tomatoes.

Awards and honours

The film won seven Academy Awards and was nominated in a further four categories.

The film won three Golden Globes (Best Picture, Supporting Actor, Original Score).

American Film Institute recognition