“I had a farm in Africa,” intones Meryl Streep in this Best Picture of 1985, faithful to the first sentence of Isak Dinesen’s exquisite memoir of the same title, recalling her years owning and managing a coffee plantation in the Ngong hills, near Nairobi, Kenya. If there is one sequence in the film that captures the spirit and power of the book on which it is based, it is
the flight she and her lover, Denys Finch-Hatton (Robert Redford), take in his biplane over the plains of East Africa. "Now we went down, and as we sank our own shade, dark-blue, floated under us upon the light blue lake. Here live thousands of Flamingoes.... At our approach they spread out in large circles and fans, like the rays of a setting sun, like an artful Chinese pattern on silk or porcelain."
Kenya would prove to be the perfect setting for someone like Dinesen (the pen name of Baroness Karen Blixen) with extraordinary powers of observation, empathy, and a gift for storytelling, to set down what she saw and felt, and who the native people were. The reality of life on the farm, revealed in her clear, vivid prose, was sometimes harsh and tragic.
Dinesen's "Out of Africa," first published in 1937, is told in vignettes that weave together many more characters and events than the film can encompass. The dashing hunter Finch-Hatton is but one romantic figure in a passing parade. In the film's most poignant moments, Streep simply quotes Dinesen: “If I know a song of Africa, ... of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me?”
Whether or not you have seen the movie, or never do, I urge you to read this book, Dinesen’s song of Africa, soaring, delightful and profound.
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