A free-spirited Danish baroness moves to Kenya with her husband to start a plantation, and falls in love with the country and its people as well as a big-game hunter.
Out of Africa is based on the life and writings of Karen Blixen, who after her experiences in Kenya returned to Denmark and became a celebrated author under the pen name Isak Dinesen. The film portrays a time when European colonials had settled in significant numbers and lived relatively hedonistically, but harmoniously with their adopted country, before the corruption of industrialization had set in. Blixen was a very outspoken and independent woman who formed unusually strong relationships with the native peoples who she came into contact with, many of whom worked on her plantation.
Sydney Pollack began his career directing for television before working in various movie genres with some of the biggest Hollywood stars of the last 40 years, most notably Robert Redford, who appeared in Pollack's second film and would collaborate on six more. Out of Africa was Pollack's biggest and most challenging production to date; previous efforts by Orson Welles and David Lean to film Blixen's life never made it before cameras. Attention to detail was meticulous, with location sets in Africa requiring a year to be built, and some of Blixen's actual furniture and residences were used during filming.
The story was not simply adapted from Dinesen's book of the same name; screenwriter Kurt Luedtke also utilized other Dinesen writings as well as biographies of the central characters to gain more overall perspective. While some of the film's narration is taken from the author herself, most of it was written to approximate her style.
In addition to Redford, the film also stars Meryl Streep, who was able to perfect the required accent by studying voice recordings of DInesen reading her own writings. Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer plays Blixen's philandering husband. The score was composed by John Barry, who made his name writing music for the James Bond films and went on to become one of the most prolific and acclaimed film composers in modern cinema, his work on Out of Africa arguably his crowning achievement.
The film was a box office and critical success and won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Director for Pollack, as well as art direction, score, cinematography, and screenplay. Nominations also went to Streep and Brandauer.
Running time is approx. 2 1/2 hours.
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