GRIMM'S
Nowhere In Africa
About the Director:
Caroline Link (b. 1964) is a German film director and screenwriter. In her youth, she studied at the Munich Academy of Film and Television. Nowhere in Africa is her third film, and her first to address the Holocaust. Link has been nominated herself for one Bavarian Film Award (Best New Director), although her films have been nominated for—and received—several Academy Awards. Link resides with her partner, fellow filmmaker Dominik Graf, and their daughter.
In the last decade, where Awards Season has become a veritable social event for both moviegoers and moviemakers, is it not unusual to view a film that panders so desperately for the attention these events bring. Unfortunately, Caroline Link's Nowhere in Africa is a film like that, telling the story a German-Jewish family that escapes their Nazi-occupied homeland by going to live and work on a farm in Kenya. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Stephanie Zwieg, the film has proved to be one of Germany's highest grossing films of the last decade.
Not long before the Gemany’s borders are definitively shut—and the family’s remaining loved ones are herded into ghettos or made the victims of Nazi violence—Jettel Redlich (Juliane Köhler) and her 5-year-old daughter Regina (Lea Kurka) are able to make it out of the country to join the family patriarch, Walter (Merab Ninidze), in arid Kenya. As in the book, much of the action takes place through the eyes of Regina, who quickly adapts to life in Kenya--as most children would--by quickly making friends with the family's cook, Owuor (Sidede Onyulo), and the other children living on the farm. Her mother does not have such an easy time adjusting. Rather than purchase the refrigerator that Walter requested, Jettel opted to spend their limited financial resources on an evening gown and bring along fancy china in place of more practical items. Jettel does like Kenya, and does not understand what she is doing in such a hard, unforgiving country that is seemingly lacking in culture; she is pampered, and obsessed with status.
The film, at its heart, is a story about people--although beautifully shot, the Kenyan landscape is routinely ignored as is the family's Jewishness until either is trotted out to support a weak historical reference or connection to another character. The plot line is meandering, and it appears that the movie is unsure of whose story to tell. Thankfully, the film retains somewhat of an unsentimental edge (keeping it from becoming yet another rose-colored nostalgic memoir of the past) by making it clear that Jettel and Walter don't care for each other all that much. Both openhandedly give affection to their child, Regina, but have only bitter criticisms, mutual coldness, and distance reserved for each other. Both are frustrated with their fates--Jettel as an isolated housewife, and Walter as a failed farmer. Neither is a inherently likable character, but Link's saving grace here is that the character's situation is easy to identify with, therefore making the characters somewhat more sympathetic.
Ultimately, Nowhere in Africa is not a dull film--merely meandering and shapeless, feeling more like the memoir-like pages of a diary than an actual film. Plot lines that would add more development to the characters, such as Regina's flirtation with the village boy or Jettel's interactions with Süsskind, are teased at but never fully developed. More knowledge of what exactly motivates the characters, less footage, and sharper editing are sorely needed in this film to give shape to what the character's desire and hope for. The Kenyan landscape makes for a beautiful enhancer to the story when it is utilized, but there still remains something too neutral and emotionally distant about Nowhere in Africa. The film serves up many clichés (the gimmicky locust scene, for example) that warm the heart, but offer up nothing original.
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