DVDs: Meryl Streep

We are transported back and forth through time as present day actors making a movie are parallel and overlapped with the characters and the story. We easily see the contrasts and the similarities between the Victorian Sarah and the modern Ann both played by Meryl Streep.

The story on the surface is a strait forwarded mystery and Sarah is not what see seems. However there are many depths to this film in what is says and what it does not. A biologist Charles Henry Smithson (Jeremy Irons) is finally engaged to a woman who has been trying to tie him down. He will inherit a place in her father's empire if he wishes to do so. At the last moment he discovers a strange outcast woman that enchant hem and lures hem astray only to disappear from his life. The actors' lives are similar.
Will Charles find Sarah or is his fate to be alone?
What about Ann and Mike?

Many people remember the picturesque scene of Sarah on the Cobb looking out to sea; however for me it is a scene where the actors are discussing how she gets caught on the brambles and trips. In the next scene it is played out.

freedom beyond the pale      5 von 5 Punkten
Diser Film ist wirklich der erste den ich je gesehen habe, der es schafft das das Medium Buch perfekt in das Medium Film zu adaptieren.
Ich habe den Film gesehen bevor ich das Buch gelesen habe und war fasziniert. Als ich dann das Buch "The French Lieutenant`s woman" von John Fowles gelesen hatte, war ich trotzdem nicht enttäuscht von der Filmversion!
Die seltsame Liebesgeschichte der mysteriösen Außenseiterin Sarah Woodruff, aus einfachen Verhältnissen stammend, und dem aristokratische konventionellen, jedoch liberalen Charles Smithson im Viktorianischen England (1867) bildet die Haupthandlung des Filmes. Eine dazu parallel verlaufende Handlung enthüllt, dass diese Geschichte von zwei im 20. Jahrhundert lebenden Schauspielern, Mike (Jeremy Irons) und Anna (Meryl Streep)gedreht wird. Die beiden kommen sich nicht nur als Charles und Sarah auf der Leinwand näher, sondern haben auch im wirklichen Leben aine Affäre, sind aber beide anderwärtig gebunden, d.h. verheiratet.
Die viktorianische Sarah ist eine der"fallen woman"(es wird erzählt sie hatte ein Verhältnis mit einem französischen Lieutenant)wie man sie aus Prototypisierungen des Victorian Age kennt, und steht für die Emanzipation .Sie und Charles müssen sich entscheiden, welches Ende ihre Geschichte nehmen soll (im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes, denn der Roman stellt 2 verschiedene, ein gutes und ein schlechtes Ende zur Verfügung). Auch Anna und MIke müssen eine Entscheidung fällen.
Wie und warum diese so ausfallen, wie sie dargestellt werden, sollte man sich auf jeden Fall ansehen!

Karel Reisz schafft hier eine Darstellung der Liebe des viktorianischen, und des heutigen Zeialters, und kommentiert mit subtilen Mitteln ihre Gültigkeit. Es ist ein ruhiger und gefühlvoller Film, der seine Botschaft gekonnt rüberbringt.

ANSCHAUEN!!

Tragischschöne Geschichte      4 von 5 Punkten
Dieser Film mit Meryln Streep und Jeremy Irons nach einem Roman von John Fowles, das Drehbuch von Harold Pinter begeistert den Zuschauer mit melancholisch schönen Bildern. Er schildert die Situation der Frau im viktorianischen Zeitalter, anhand einer wunderschönen Liebesgeschichte. Meryln Streep beweist hier, dass sie eine herausragende Charakterdarstellerin ist. Pinters Umsetzung des Stoffes, der Wechsel zwischen dem vikorianischn England und dem England heute sind brilliant. Mit 5 Oscar-Nominierungen wurde dieser Film belohnt. Die beiiden Hauptdarsteller starteten mit diesem Film ihre Filmkarrieren, und erhielten für spätere Werke den Oscar.

 Weitere Kundenmeinungen

1938 in Albany/New York:

Francis (Jack Nicholson), ein ehemaliger Baseballstar, wandert als zielloser Vagabund durch die Strassen. Er und seine Langzeitgefährtin Helen (Meryl Streep), die vormals eine Karriere als Radiosängerin anstrebte, stehen am Rand der Gesellschaft und der Alkohol ist beider bester Freund. Francis jagen die schatten der Vergangenheit. Er fühlt sich schuldig an dem Tode seines kleinen Sohnes, den er nie ganz verkraftet hat und der auch Auslöser für ihn war, seine Familie zu verlassen. Nun nach einigen Jahren auf der Strasse sucht er wieder Kontakt zu seiner Familie. Doch er stellt schnell fest, daß dies nicht so einfach ist......

Also...ich habe den Film nicht wirklich verstanden...! ;-)

As such, the movie's story of Danish writer Karen Blixen's (Isak Dinesen's) experience in Kenya is inextricably intertwined with her love for free-spirited hunter/adventurer Denys Finch Hatton. Just as she spends years trying to wrangle coffee beans from ground patently unfit for their plantation and create a dam where water that, her servants tell her, "lives in Mombassa" needs to flow freely, only to see her efforts fail at last, so also her romance with Finch Hatton blossoms only as long as she is still (pro forma) married, and thus cannot fully claim him. As soon as the basis of their relationship changes, Finch Hatton withdraws - and is killed in a plane crash shortly thereafter, his death thus cementing a development already underway with terrible finality. In her eulogy Karen asks God to take back his soul with its freedom intact: "He was not ours - he was not mine." Yet, both Kenya and Finch Hatton leave such a mark on her that, forced to return to Denmark, she literally writes them back into her life; again becoming the "mental traveler" she had been before first setting foot on African soil, using her exceptional storytelling powers to resurrect the world and the man she lost, and be united with them in spirit where a more tenable union is no longer possible.

While "Out of Africa" is an adaptation of Blixen's like-named ode to Kenya, several of her other works also informed the screenplay; as did Judith Thurman's Blixen biography. And it's this combination which in screenwriter Carl Luedtke' and director Sydney Pollack's hands turns into gold where prior attempts have failed; because Blixen's book is primarily, as Pollack explains, "a pastorale, a beautifully formed memoir [relying] on her prose style, her sense of poetry and her ability to discover large truths in very small ... details" but lacking "much narrative drive" and thus, "difficult to translate to film." In addition, Blixen was largely silent about her relationship with Finch Hatton, which however was an essential element of the story, thus dooming any attempt to produce a movie without extensive prior research into this area.

Meryl Streep was not Sydney Pollack's first choice for the role of Karen, for which luminaries including Greta Garbo and Audrey Hepburn had previously been considered. Looking back in the DVD's documentary, Streep and Pollack recount how his change of mind came about (and ladies, I just know her version will make you laugh out loud). But while unfortunately neither her Oscar- nor her Golden-Globe-nomination turned into one of the movie's multiple awards (on Oscar night alone, Best Movie, Best Director and Best Cinematography, Art Direction, Music and Sound), she was indeed the perfect choice. Few contemporary actresses have her range of talent and sensitivity; and listening to tapes of Blixen reading her own works allowed her not only to develop a Danish accent but to become the story's narrative voice in the completest sense, from Blixen's persona to her perceptions and penmanship.

Much has been made of the fact that as Finch Hatton no British actor was cast but Robert Redford, with whom Pollack had previously collaborated in five successful movies, including the mid-1970s' "The Way We Were" and "Three Days of the Condor." But as Pollack points out, Finch Hatton, although a real enough person in Karen Blixen's life, in the movie's context stands for the universal type of the charming, ever-unpossessable, mysterious male; and there simply is no living actor whose image matches that type as closely as Redford's. Indeed, in this respect his character in "Out of Africa" epitomizes his "Redfordness" more intensely than *any* of his other roles. Moreover, all references to Finch Hatton's nationality are deleted here; so this isn't Robert Redford trying to portray a member of the English upper class, this is Redford portraying Redford (or at least, his public image) - and therefore, it is only proper that he didn't adopt a British accent, either.

Praise for this movie wouldn't be complete without mentioning the splendid, Golden-Globe-winning performance of Klaus-Maria Brandauer, one of today's best German-speaking actors, in the role of Karen's philandering husband Bror. (And if you think he's duplicitous here, rent such gems as "Mephisto" and "Hanussen" - or, for that matter, "James Bond: Never Say Never Again" - and you'll see what creepy and demonic really is when it's grown up). And of course, "Out of Africa" wouldn't be what it is without its superb African cast members; particularly Malick Bowens as Karen's faithful major domus Farah and Joseph Thiaka in his only known screen appearance as Kamante, Karen's indomitable cook. Several fine British actors complete the cast, providing enough British colonial feel even for those quibbling with Redford's casting; to name but a few, Michael Kitchen as Finch Hatton's friend Berkeley Cole, Michael Gough as Lord "Dee" Delamere and Suzanna Hamilton as Felicity (whose character is based on Blixen's friend and rival for Finch Hatton's attentions, Beryl Markham).

In all, "Out of Africa" is a grand, lavishly produced tribute to Africa, nature, freedom, adventure and love: Karen Blixen's "Song of Africa" brought to the big screen - and one of the profoundest love stories ever written by life itself.