Out of Africa [Blu-ray]

Nice movie..romantic and has beautiful scenery.Beautiful music score

Epic and splendid movie. Gorgeous score. Stellar cinematography, brilliant story, beautifully acted. One of my favorites.

I had my “African period” once, when it was so near. Five years, 1979-84, and save for a month in Morocco (which some might say does not count) in 1990, I have not been back…save by books. More recently I’ve read books by Africans themselves, like Moses Isegawa and Alain Mabanckou. In the “African period” I read mainly books by those of European descent. There were those by males, Alan Paton, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Ernest Hemingway. It was three women however who helped put the “awe” into my appreciation for Africa. Each got some dirt under their fingernails – they were farmers. Each inspired visits with words of their experiences. Olive Schreiner wrote “The Story of an African Farm.” Elspeth Huxley wrote “The Flame Trees of Thika.” And Karen Blixen, under the pen name, Isak Dinesen, wrote “Out of Africa,” which was first published in 1937 and commenced with the subject line.Sidney Pollack directed the movie, which was released in 1985. Two big-named Hollywood stars, Meryl Streep, who played Baroness Blixen and Robert Redford, with his perpetually perplexed expression, played the independent English hunter, Denys Finch Hatton, who would eventually become the paramour of Blixen. Klaus Maria Brandauer, played Blixen’s philandering husband, who gifted her with some syphilis, back in the pre-antibiotic days when the poison, mercury, was the treatment, which worked in Blixen’s case. The two were eventually divorced. And Africa, well, it played itself and Pollack has his camerapersons reinforce the “awe.”Can watching a movie that sorta glorified the colonial period be “politically correct” nowadays? Well, at one level, I don’t care, but I think that Pollack did a good job of showing a lot of the warts, shorn of the glory. Blixen, for example, is not allowed into the men’s only club. And as she must have done in real life, she did go to considerable lengths to ensure that the natives were given a better deal, on land that was once theirs, as she dramatically states on her knees.I liked watching the interactions between Streep and Redford, depicting relationships from the days when, as Bob Dylan once sung, in “Tom Thumb’s Blues”: “And you try not to go to her too soon.” Best to make sure you wait at least an hour, sometimes a metaphorical one. And I loved the scene of confrontation between Blixen’s husband and Denys when the former said: “You might have asked, Denys.” Redford comes back with: “I did, and she said Yes.”Furthering the realism, shorn of the glory, as Marguerite Duras attested, in far off Indochine, many colonists were far from wealthy and lead rather hardscrabble existences. The one off-note in the film was the impressive stone home the Blixens lived in, almost certainly much better than the initial homes built before 1913. As Huxley says of her experience: we built a house of grass and ate off a damask cloth spread between packing cases. As for Blixen, assorted disasters on the farm eventually forced her to return to Denmark, in 1931, destitute.A good movie that evoked a bit of nostalgia for my own experiences of four decades ago, and a yearning to return to the continent. Algeria might be a good start, even though some might say that doesn’t count either. 5-stars for Africa, the awe, and a couple very good actors.

It's the Covid pandemic of 2020- 2021 and like most people I hunkered down at my comfy home and decided to re-watch Out of Africa, a movie on my list of top ten favorite movies. For me this cinematic masterpiece has survived the test of time. How can a tragic love story against a backdrop of gorgeous African landscapes with a lush sweeping score by the great John Barry be a disappointment?! Meryl Streep is absolutely luminous as Karen Blixen and Robert Redford as Denys Finch-Hatton, ruggedly handsome but still golden with his locks, both elicited antagonizing chemistry if that makes any sense. Apparently there are two definitions of love and the different lifestyles that is incurred. Karen possessive, clingy, headstrong, righteous and always seeking constancy in life whereas Denys, free spirited, adventurous, wanting no accountability attached to another person, even Karen. To love and to hold on for Karen versus loving enough to let go and be free for Denys. Hmmmm......most of us may pick the former. It would've been a happier life for Karen if the man she loved were around to help her with the coffee farm and experience trials and errors with her. Alas, both her husband Bror and Denys did not fit the bill. I just had to analyze this theme. Otherwise, Out of Africa still mesmerizing from the opening credits to the flight across the African plains and water to the romantic notion of a lion and lioness lounging on top of his gravesite turns me into a useless weak-kneed lump of gelatin!! Hurray to director Sydney Pollack for bringing an exquisite and timeless romance drama to our screens. This movie is well deserving of its seven Academy Awards. I highly recommend this movie and would give it 6 Stars if I could.

Many Academy award winning movies are some "Hollywood" types tossing a statue at other "Hollywood" types. Somehow this one is different. The story is happy and sad, sometimes at the same time. The setting, it was made in Africa, was great, and the music by John Barry was "Africa". The costumes, backgrounds, vehicles, even the animals - were outstanding. The actors became their rolls. Streep, Redford and Brandauer (a Bond villain by the way) became real. You may recognize many actors from their other rolls: Shane Rimmer (a Bond regular), Maryam d'Abo (a Bond Heroine - she pours champagne in the first minute or two), and Michael Gough (Batman's Alfred) to name a few. It's a movie that needs to be watched with a gin and tonic - to contain the movie's sadness and combat malaria.