‘Out Of Africa’ — Bored Out Of My Mind?

I first saw ‘Out of Africa’ (1985) when I was a teenager. My girlfriend and I went to see it at the Grosvenor, Ashton Lane. She wanted to watch the movie; I wanted to make out.

“Not now! I want to see the film.”
“But you wanted to make out during ‘Absolute Beginners’ (1986).”
“Yes, but this is a serious film.”
“But it’s boring!”
“Shut up and watch the movie.”

Duly chastised I watched Meryl Streep and Robert Redford with what I can only describe as utter resentment. Is that why I always had an irrational dislike for the film: because it made me feel immature? Not stupid, I understood it, but I did feel like a juvenile adolescent as my girlfriend sat engrossed and all I could think was that it must be true girls mature quicker than boys and if this was what all romantic dramas were like then I was never going to watch one again and it was a boring, stupid movie even if it had won loads of Oscars making me feel even more unsophisticated and I would stick to robots and car chases.

Revisiting it as an adult it turns out teenage Colin was correct as the film is a total bore! Why did I beat myself up like that? It wasn’t me lacking in any way. It was, most certainly, the movie.

For those who haven’t seen the film it involves Meryl Streep who goes to Africa where she meets a handsome man who gives her marriage, a nice lifestyle and a sexual disease. A bit miffed she starts hanging out with Robert Redford where they have a picnic and invent the shampoo commercial then she has a jumble-sale and goes home. And that’s it.

I’m not too sure which is more flat and dry — the sun-baked savannah or the film’s drama and narrative because ‘Out of Africa’ is tedious. Is love meant to be this boring and dull? Sure, it’s a nice looking film, especially when they’re flying about bothering the animals but there is no real passion going on here.

The acting is decent even if Robert Redford looks too detached and unconvincing in his environment, as though he’s still playing Gatsby and has come on safari by accident, plus the music is nice with John Barry obviously being told by director Sidney Pollock to deliver a soundtrack which precisely evokes the wide plains, exotic wildlife and untamed atmosphere of the continent which Barry does by providing a score which precisely evokes the music of John Barry. Look, I love the guy’s music but let’s not deny his work can be totally interchangeable at times.

Sidney Pollack’s directing won an Oscar, so they obviously had “inertia” as a category criterion back then, along with ten others including Best Picture. That could be why the film reminds of those other Award-baiting movies of the early/mid-1980s that have a seething undercurrent of banality under their surface (‘Gandhi’? ‘Amadeus’?), feeling less like motion-pictures and more like heavily-constructed display cabinets to place Oscars on.

Karen Blixen might have had a farm in Africa but I wish I had a time-machine so I could go back to Ashton Lane and whisper to teenage Colin from the seat behind him — “Don’t worry. It IS boring!”