Out of Patience
FILM: I Dreamed of Africa
DIRECTOR: Hugh Hudson
STARRING: Kim Basinger, Vincent Perez
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WHERE ARE YOU, ROBERT AND MERYL? VINCENT PEREZ AND KIM BASINGER DO
THEIR BEST REDFORD/STREEP IMITATION IN THE DISAPPOINTING I DREAMED OF
AFRICA.
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Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa ran off with a slew of Oscars back in
1985, but I was not among the film's fans. Based on the autobiographical works
of Karen Blixen, who wrote as Isak Dinesen, the picture suffered from a
narrative fragmentation that kept it from coalescing into a satisfying whole.
Out of Africa did benefit from gorgeous photography and starring turns
by Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Klaus Maria Brandauer at their best, but
the fine acting couldn't save the diffuse script. Of course, the eight Oscars,
including the one for best picture, probably blinded most studio execs to that
fact and perhaps accounts for the current appearance of Hugh Hudson's I
Dreamed of Africa, which bears a striking resemblance to Pollack's film.
Both pictures are about stout-hearted blond women who relocate from their
European homes to the wilds of Africa, where they spend a lot of their time
being abandoned by men who'd just as soon hunt wild game as stay home and love
them. But I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that I Dreamed of
Africa will fall about eight Oscars short of the total captured by Out
of Africa, for whereas the narrative in the earlier picture was fragmented,
the story in the current release is almost atomized.
I Dreamed of Africa stars Kim Basinger as Kuki Gallmann, on
whose memoirs the film is based. We first meet Kuki in her privileged existence
as an American living the high life of indolent exile in exotic Italy. But
after an accident threatens her life, she suddenly starts asking deep questions
about the meaning of it all. When she finds a kindred spirit in Paolo Gallmann
(Vincent Perez), she marries, and together with her 7-year-old son Emanuele
(Liam Aiken and later Garrett Strommen), they decide to do "something good with
their lives." Others might think of religious service to the poor, but for Kuki
and Paolo, doing "something good with their lives" means moving to Kenya. How
we admire them as they buy a dilapidated ranch in the high plains of a gorgeous
land. And how we worry about them as they purchase thousands of heads of cattle
so that they can make a lot of money while they are "doing something good with
their lives." And how we chuck them on the shoulder for their pluck at making
do in such an isolated place with the assistance only of those native Kenyans
who are so desperate for the encouragement and appreciation of white people
that they appear to start working even before they are hired.
Is Kuki brave? Why doesn't she sleep without commonplace walls for
her bedroom even though the local lion already has eaten her dog? Is Kuki
determined? Why doesn't she scream at a bull elephant to bug off her property
even though the bull elephant is slightly bigger than she is and speaks English
with a guttural accent? Is Kuki patient? Why doesn't she tolerate a husband for
whom the words "I'll be home in a week" translate into "You'll know I'm coming
when you can smell the animal carcasses strapped to my jeep"? Is Kuki
environmentally correct? Why doesn't she wrinkle her brow and stamp her foot
every time she comes across an elephant or rhinoceros butchered for ivory? Is
Kuki a caring mom? Why doesn't she pucker her bottom lip because she has to
send Emanuele to a British boarding school that won't even let her visit him on
the weekends? Is Kuki racially correct? Why doesn't she talk to the native
villagers who live in a dusty village somewhere within a jeep ride of her
100,000 acres as if they were actual human beings instead of the suspected
butchering poachers she knows them to be?
Is Kuki strong? Why doesn't she out-walk a lion who must have
gotten a peek at her figure and reasoned "too little meat on them bones" to
make it worth eating her? Is Kuki perseverant? Why doesn't she overcome rain
and wind and cattle disease and the fact that she has to get on a plane if she
wants to do any decent shopping whatsoever? Is Kuki resilient? She has to
endure the brutal deaths of loved ones so noxiously irresponsible they ought to
be killed for doing the very things they get killed doing, but darn it within
just a matter of hours, isn't she able to produce some crackerjack poems to
read at their funerals?
In sum, about 10 times too much happens in I Dreamed of
Africa, and none of the string of disjointed episodes produces a satisfying
arc of rising tension and climax before each is abandoned for the next.
Basinger is a game performer and always worth watching, but she's betrayed by a
script that's as badly structured as it is alarmingly myopic. Perez, meanwhile,
is no Robert Redford. I Dreamed of Africa is the kind of picture that's
all the more irritating because it is so cockily sure of its righteousness when
all the while it's actually a significant indicator of what's wrong with the
world.
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