Out of Africa (1985)

Out Of Africa is good film, but not worthy of the adulation heaped on it in 1985. It features great acting from Meryl Streep (with an excellent Danish accent) and Klaus Maria Brandauer paired with David Watkin's cinematography and John Barry's score. The cinematography is reminiscent of David Lean's epics but of a much smaller scale. Lean's films sprawled across decades and thousands of miles, yet Out Of Africa centres around a coffee farm. It never performs great sweeping montages even though part of it is set during the Great War. It centres on a Danish woman who runs a farm in colonial Africa who takes care of her black workers and is depicted occasionally working alongside them (like a white woman would do that, then or now). There are those who would take offence at this idealised presentation of colonialism, but if one-hundred thousand white people can rule a continent of 178 million with more trouble from the white Boers than blacks then it couldn't be that bad. Robert Redford acts well but plays his character as modern American rather than the Englishman (Sydney Pollack's fault) he was based on (my dad also noted that he was slightly anti-British, despite always being around them) and the romance between Streep and Redford never sweeps me away in its passion. Aside from inaccuracies, and the lack of actual passion in the romance, Out Of Africa is not a very special film and would not have won seven Oscars had it not been that 1985 was a rather weak year for awards (and the Academy likes big, long (Jesus H those 161 minutes were long, (FILMCLUB is very inaccurate at running times)) epics, think Gone With The Wind, Dances with Wolves and The King's Speech, all of which cheated better (why am I doing so many brackets (cause its fun (yeah but its distracting) screw you (make me) I'll put you to work on the farm) quiet the two of you) films). Out Of Africa is a long (hence the length of this review), slow and passionless but well acted, shot and scored. The plot is disjointed and would have been better if the sweeping visuals did not distract from the people in them or the story told in a non-chronological manner. Its flawed but its nice look at and Barry makes good music.