Product: Nowhere in Africa (2003)
Rating: 5.0
human relationships
This is nothing short of an exceptional cinematic achievement. I had not heard much about this film before finally seeing it, and I was overwhelmed by its slow-moving but fascinating tale of a German Jewish family choosing to expatriate to 1930s Kenya before they ended up victims of the Nazi regime, which was growing and beginning to bear its teeth. A man, Walter, leaves his law practice and goes to Kenya and works on a ranch there, setting things up to greet his wife and daughter there. Unfortunately, his wife, Jettel, has no intention of adapting or settling in to this new way of life, not wanting to interact with the native population, refusing to assimilate to their new circumstances. Happily, the child, Regina, adapts to and enjoys their new surroundings. The scenery is stunning, and one can appreciate in viewing the film both the difficulties of adapting to this startlingly new way of life but also the excitement of being a part of something wholly different. The strains on the marriage between Walter and Jettel are clear; they no longer seem to have anything in common, if they ever did. It is only once they have learned the fate of the family members back in Germany who refused to leave that Jettel begins to realize that her life has been spared possibly only due to the fact that her husband "saw the writing on the wall", so to speak. Jettel's attitudes and approach to life in Kenya have slowly been transformed so that she not only falls in love with the place, she scarcely wants to return to or have anything to do with the Germany that destroyed her life as she knew it. This leads to problems during the post-war period in which Walter is eager to return to Germany to rebuild and restructure the country in a more just image. He has been offered a post as a judge, and Jettel is reluctant to return. Ultimately, this film delves deeply into human and familial relationships rather than the complexities of war and of the holocaust (which is treated more as an unseen backdrop or a "what might have been"); it portrays a rich characterization of people who are thrown into unfamiliar territory and illustrates what they do with their new surroundings. In fact, it highlights how people change and how those changes are often nothing less than surprising. Overall a beautiful film; it deserved the best foreign language film Academy Award it won.