Product: Nowhere in Africa (2003)
Rating: 5.0
It's easy to see why this film won an Oscar...
It has an epic scope and deals with serious issues -- how one group exploits and oppresses another.Set in the period before, during, and after World War II, this movie tells the story of a an upper middle class Jewish family fortunate enough to get out of Germany in time. They end up starting from scratch in Kenya, where life for them is very different and very difficult. The family members (a father joined by his wife and young daughter) have varying degrees of difficulty in adopting to this new country and relating to the Africans who work the farms they are managing. The father -- a lawyer in Germany -- respects the Kenyan staff and immediately sets about learning the language. The mother has a more difficult time adjusting and wants the Kenyan cook (on whom they are deeply dependant) to speak German and resists learning the language. The young daughter quickly becomes assimilated, since her playmates in the isolated farm are Kenyans. As they struggle to survive and adjust, news reaches them from time to time about what's happening to the Jews in Germany (including their family).My only criticism is that this film could have been edited to make it more suitable for family viewing -- older children and teenagers -- which it isn't, in my opinion. You really couldn't show it in a high school, for example, although the content on the whole would be terrific for a conversation on a number of important topics, including cultural differences.But -- there are a couple of scenes of animals being slaughtered (and people eating VERY fresh meat) that turned my stomach, as well as some very explicit sex scenes. BOth of these kinds of scenes were really gratuitous to what the movie was intending to say, in my opinion. Otherwise, this movie is outstanding -- it really provokes thoughts about how we regard others who are different -- whether Jewish or Kenyan -- and how we deal with diversity with respect without losing our identity completely.