Product: Nowhere in Africa (2003)
Rating: 5.0
"What I've learned here is how important differences are."
Establishing cultural contrasts in the opening scenes--German children playing in snow alternating with scenes of an African riding a bicycle through the dry, hot plains--director Caroline Link creates a sensitive portrait of the Redlich family, German Jews who acknowledge the rising anti-Semitism in Breslau in 1938 and abandon Germany for Africa. Walter Redlich (Merab Ninidze), his wife Jettel (Juliane Kohler), and young daughter Regina (Lea Kurka), forced to leave their extended family behind, relocate to a remote, subsistence level farm in Kenya.Regina, like all children, quickly becomes fascinated by her new life and the cultures she discovers. Walter, now working as a farm manager instead of as a lawyer, and spoiled Jettel, who has brought along her Rosenthal china instead of a refrigerator, face more immediate difficulties acclimating to the culture and their changed circumstances.Director Link places the emphasis here on the impossibility of the family's "fitting in" because of the differences in language, race, education, religion, and former lifestyle. Their African cook Owuor (elegantly played by Sidede Onyulo), however, helps them adjust to their new lives, and a warm relationship evolves between them, especially with young Regina. When war breaks out, Walter is interned by the British, later joining Operation J, a group of Jews Against Hitler. Jettel must recognize the realities of life, adapting to what is, rather than what used to be.Link focuses on Africa, not the Holocaust, revealing what is happening in Europe through letters, not through direct scenes. Merab Ninidze plays a realistic Walter, agonizing over the fate of his family in Germany and impatient with Jettel's spoiled petulance in Africa. Juliane Kohler movingly portrays Jettel's transformation from protected wife to a woman with goals, totally committed to making the farm work and freed from the social restrictions in Germany. Lea Kurka, outstanding as the young Regina, has the enthusiasm of youth, an unrestrained love for Owuor and the African children she meets, and the ability to accept being an outsider at the British school she attends, resented because of her academic success and German roots. Eventually, the family must decide where, if anyplace, they really "belong" and whether to accept repatriation.The cinematography by Gernot Roll emphasizes the harsh reality of life and its day-to-day tedium, not the romantic sunrise-on-the-Serengeti shots of many other African films. Academy Award winner in 2002 for Best Foreign Film, the film emphasizes real life, real hardships, and real cultural differences, stressing the innate belief that humans, no matter how tolerant of other cultures, function most effectively and most happily within a shared heritage. Mary Whipple