Her loyal aide Farah, her young cook Kamante Gatura, and the Kikuyu chieftain Kinanjui are all prominent characters in the memoire. The major African characters in the film are all taken from the book.

Where Blixen’s book spends a good deal of time exploring her relationship with various Africans and her efforts to make sense of their society, the film’s focus on the relationship between Blixen (Meryl Streep), Bror (Klaus Maria Brandauer), and Finch Hatton (Robert Redford) means that much of the heart of the book gets crowded out. But while the film successfully captures some of Africa’s beauty, it does a much less effective job of capturing African culture. The cinematography is at times breath-taking and lyrical. The book is, at a fundamental level, about the contrast between European and African society, and the movie tries to capture that by showing the exoticism of African’s wildlife, scenery, and peoples. At least, it claims to be about Blixen’s memoire, although it substantially deviates from the book, as I pointed out in my previous post. As a result, we have to recognize that the film’s view of Africa is at two removes from history, since it is showing the Africa of Blixen’s memories more than the Africa of history. Consequently, the film is not truly a depiction of colonial Kenya so much as it is a depiction of Blixen’s memoires about colonial Kenya. The film is loosely based on Karen Blixen’s memoire of life in Kenya in the 1920s, Out of Africa (written under the pen name of Isak Dinesen). But its depiction of colonial Africa leaves a good deal to be desired. It’s one of those movies that draws me in any time I run across it on cable. Sydney Pollack) is a wonderful film in many ways.

Denys finch hatton isak dinesen