CHASING OSCAR - Road to Madness

MERYL STREEP 

as Karen Blixen in OUT OF AFRICA (1985)
____________________________________________________________________

A study of the life of Danish noblewoman and storyteller Karen  Dinesen Blixen, from her marriage and departure for Kenya in 1913 until her return to Denmark in 1931. As she struggles to maintain a coffee farm through various struggles and disasters, and strives to improve relations with the local natives, her marriage of convenience to a titled aristocrat gradually gives way to an enduring romance with the noted hunter and adventurer Denys Finch Hatton.

"It's an odd feeling, farewell. There is such envy in it. Men go off to be tested, for courage. And if we're tested at all, it's for patience, for doing without, for how well we can endure loneliness."

                                         - Karen Blixen

Meryl Streep interprets brilliantly a strong minded Danish lady, who marries a friend for the title of baroness, they move to AFRICA and start a coffee plantation. At the beginning, Meryl Streep appears as a very distinguished woman, with a lot of mannerisms, who
is eager to tell stories and learns from the world. From the beginning, Meryl is great, she nails the Danish accent, she nails the posture, we truly think she’s from a faraway aristocracy family. She’s very convincing. Things changed when her husband begins cheating on her and is away on business often, so she's at home alone, working on the farm and bonding with two men she met in her first day in Africa.  She eventually falls in love with the one, Denys Finch-Hatton and goes on safari and whatnot with him. It’s the beginning of a great love story, Redford and Streep have a great alchemy, and their scenes are beautifully shot. It’s a first for Meryl, she rarely appeared in romantic movies, but she’s magnificent in the role of a woman who feared loneliness, who feared to be abandoned, who desperatly needed someone. Later, she begins to want more from him than the simple relationship they have and pushes marriage, but Denys still wants his freedom. In those scenes, Meryl shows a rare dignity, she can’t compromise about what she wants, even if she loves him deeply. At the end, we learn that her lover has died in a plane crash, that she has decided to return to Denmark, the scene at the train station when she asks farah (her servent) to call her K.A.R.E.N. is heartbreaking, and is the perfect ending to a beautiful movie.


I don’t find a lot of things against Mery’s performance but I think landscapes, the beauty of Africa overshadow the performance. On paper, the role is very baity, but on screen, I don't find she has a lot of things to do. 

"She's a great actress because of her intuitiveness, her powers of observation and her sense of being in touch with herself quickly.

                                                                                               - Sidney Pollack, The Hollywood Reporter

Meryl Streep portrays a very independent woman who is inexplicably scared by loneliness. This paradox is incredibly portrayed by Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep is great, but the movie and the screenplay don’t give her a lot of things to really shine, it’s a quiet and subtle performance that needs more epic, romantic, showy scenes.  

★★★★★