En un lugar de África

Here is a grand epic in the scale of "Gone With the Wind", "Lawrence of Arabia", and "Fitzcarraldo". It is the best movie I've seen this year, and more than that, it was one of the most amazing film experiences of my life.

It is Caroline Link's "Nowhere in Africa", which won the Best Foreign Film Award when, in actuality, it was far better than the Best Picture of the Year. To call it a great or brilliant or majestic film is an understatement; in fact, I'm at a loss for adjectives to describe it.

The film tells the story of a German Jewish woman and her young daughter summoned to Kenya by her husband, circa. 1938. Adolf Hitler is on the brink of declaring his "final solution" of the Jews, and it is with great luck that Jettel and young Regina escape.

In Africa, they adapt slowly to their new rural life. While Regina befriends cook Owuor, Walter and Jettel's relationship threatens to destroy itself because of the hardships the family encounters.

I will not spend too much time going into detail, for watching this masterful story unfold is a treasure in itself. This film is based on an autobiography by Stephanie Zweig, and when it is available in English, I will certainly read it.

Also, the language in this movie is truly beautiful. I saw "Nowhere in Africa" again, just days after watching it for the first time, and spent more time ignoring the subtitles and listening to the beautiful spoken German.

And then there is one scene toward the end that I simply could not believe. It involves a locust invasion, and, quite simply, it was the first time I've ever seen something on the screen and asked myself aloud (as I did the first viewing), "How did they do that?"

The performances here are first-rate, too. Julianne Kohler, who was wonderful in the ultra-weird "Aimee & Junger" is perfect; we understand this woman fully, even when she doesn't speak. Merab Ninidze has some great scenes with Walter, the father; and Sidede Onyulo is simply magical as Owuor.

But the movie belongs to the two girls who play Regina. They look amazingly similar, and they are both stellar. Lea Kurka brings much hope as the adorable young Regina, and Karoline Eckertz is subtle and remarkable as the older Regina, particularly in a heartbreaking exchange with her father at her school.

It would be a shame to miss this film. No, it would be more than a shame. It would be downright wrong and discouraging. This film, along with the wonderful "Whale Rider" are two remarkable international films that bring beauty, grace, and majesty to the screen, and are perfect for adults and older children.

When it comes to films about the Nazi racism, Nowhere in Africa is in a class by itself. Unlike Schindler's List and a plethora of screenplays on the subject, all of which confine the drama to the morality of good and evil, some with didactic overtones, others with pure shock value, or both, this movie illuminates, both with a spotlight, and a microscope, the social origins of racism. Here's the problem: The very institutions that teach right from wrong, that inculcate tribal loyalty, patriotism, and social identity, that teach us to pledge allegiance and follow the golden rule, have also quietly inferred, or noisily demanded, that the `other,' the `alien amongst us' in Biblical terms, is both different, and inferior. Every culture, Herodotus observed, thinks its own system of values superior to the values of others. If this is true (and I think it is), the subtext is clear: `others' are inferior. Which leads one to ask: Is it possible to have a moral, socialized populace without racism, or, at least, ethnocentrism?

Set in Kenya during World War II, the drama devolves around the struggles of an expatriate family of German Jews. Culturally, intellectually, and socially, they are Germans, not Jews, which is both fascinating, and historically accurate. Like many other Jews of their generation, the expatriate family viewed their Jewish heritage with both skepticism, and as a sentimental indulgence. Unable to come to grips with the events in Europe, reeling from and their new social status of being nobodies in the middle of nowhere, they struggle as social nomads, stuck between their privileged position as white overlords of the native Blacks, and their fallen, uncertain status as guests without rights. We watch the internal dynamics of a Jewish expatriate family through the prism of its own internalized assumptions, both as highly cultured Germans, and increasingly as Jews. And what they discover about their own hidden assumptions, their ethnocentrism and European sense of privilege and superiority, becomes as shocking to them as Hitler's Germany.

Like every other archetypal hero, being nobody in the middle of nowhere is the crucible that produces the Hero's special character, where he or she eventually returns home, in the end, bearing gifts, wisdom, and a healing balm. In the end, they emerge with real gem of a prize: they understand, both intellectually and emotionally, the comparative advantage of other cultures and societies.

What I especially loved about this film is its emotional tone. It's an emotionally evocative film, though not with the mawkish, childish paroxysms of a Disney flick. We watch adults dealing with culturally layered adult emotions, unwrapping and examining each layer as one peels an onion. Their collective emotional journey is as rich and textured and subtly presented as any I've seen.

This film was a surprise. It presents us a family that escape the horrors they foresaw coming in Germany to an uncertain future in Africa. The film as directed by Caroline Link, based on a novel by Stephanie Zweig, presents us with a family of survivors who will cling to life by going out of their world into the great unknown and a continent away.

In Germany the Redlich family is upper middle class. The household is filled with people going about their lives in an elegant way. That is until Walter and Jettel Redlich decide to leave it all behind to start a new life in Africa, thus avoiding a certain death.

Walter and Jettel stick out like sore thumbs in the rural part of Kenya where they go. Walter has never done any kind of manual labor, or Jettel, for that matter. Little Regina, who is a sweet and curious girl, feels right at home from the beginning. Children will adapt more easily than grown ups.

The Redlichs are lucky when Owuor arrives. They employ him right away. He is kindness personified; he turns out to be indispensable for all of them. When Walter loses the first post, the family has to relocate to another farm helped by the benevolent Susskind; his attraction to Jettel is evident, but he is too decent to take advantage of the situation.

The many difficulties are overcome because Jettel turns out to be the strongest person in this family. She is played by Juliane Kohler with gusto. She makes us feel she is this woman in the midst of a harsh place fighting all kinds of obstacles in order to survive in the new country.

The setting feels like the Africa of the 30s and 40s when it was a white man's paradise. This is the Africa where genocides will occur later on, as different nations will try to gain independence and some governments will practice what made this family flee Nazi Germany in the first place.

Splendid German film (Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film) about a Jewish family who flees to Kenya in 1938, to escape the Nazis. Based on a true story, the plot involves the marginal nature of the Jewish characters in a radically different foreign land, and how they come to terms with the change and even come to love aspects of it. The most heartbreaking aspects of the film involve the arrival of letters from Germany, announcing the imprisonment or death of loved ones who chose to stay. The little girl says, "When a letter comes with that stamp on it, it brings tears." There is excellent acting from the European and African cast.

I saw this film twice, once on Saturday and once on the following Tuesday. I never do this.

"Nowhere in Africa" is one of the most authentic films I have seen in a long time. Like a good John Irving novel, "Nowhere in Africa" is not made up of heroes and villains. It is made up of human beings who go through their difficulties and evolve. The characters grow in the course of the film. Particularly incredible are the two actors who play the daughter at age eight and then in adolescence. It is one of the most remarkable feats of casting and acting that these two become one. They are a "seamless" being who is never cute but very real.

This film is a breath of fresh air in a media that is not particularly known for its freshness.