Nowhere In Africa [DVD] [2003]

Simply put, NOWHERE IN AFRICA is a beautiful, beguiling film that explores the essence of what is "home".

The film begins in the snows of Germany in 1938. Jettel Redlich (Juliane Kohler) and her 4-year old daughter are out for a day of sledding. Amidst the frolic, each is rudely knocked to the ground by anonymous fellow citizens. The Redlichs, you see, are Jews in Hitler's Third Reich.

Having suspected the direction that National Socialist anti-Semitism will take, Jettel's husband, Walter (Merab Ninidze), had previously given up his law practice and gone to Kenya to prepare ground for the family's emigration. He's gotten work as the range manager on a drought-plagued cattle farm. Despite the hardships, Walter writes to Jettel to come immediately with Regina and bring only the essentials and/or whatever the Nazis will allow them to carry. So, several months before Kristalnacht, mother and daughter take ship from Europe, leaving both sets of grandparents behind to their wartime fates.

Depicting a span of nine years and "told" through Regina's eyes, NOWHERE IN AFRICA examines the response of each Redlich to immersion in a vastly different physical environment and culture. Walter, the realist, embraces his new circumstances as the key to survival, even as his fortunes change multiple times over the course of the film. Jettel, arriving in Kenya a pampered, upper-middle class wife, learns the hard way. She's initially horrified by the heat, dust, dryness, monotonous diet, local customs, lack of genteel amenities, and the necessity of having to interact with native Blacks. Regina (Lea Kurka and Karoline Eckertz) copes the best of all, beginning with her immediate attachment to the family's congenial native cook, Owour, marvelously played by Sidede Onyulo. Of the three, the daughter becomes the most Africanized.

After nine years, after having endured a roller coaster of experiences and a sometimes troubled marriage, Walter and Jettel must decide whether or not to return themselves and Regina to a defeated and devastated homeland. Do they owe anything to the country that rejected them and liquidated their relatives?

Every aspect of NOWHERE IN AFRICA can be described by a superlative. It's a sedately paced love affair with Africa in all of its seductiveness. Even locusts play a part. In the very last scene, perhaps Jettel and the viewer realize that "going home again" may not be an option when the realm of the heart has shifted forever.

If Jettel Redich, a sophisticated, attractive and perhaps shallow woman with a small daughter, a loving husband and a warm, extended family, had had her way in 1938 she would not have left Germany to join her husband in East Afrika. Of course, if she hadn't she and her daughter, along with all her family, would have been killed in the German death camps three or four years later. Jettel (Julianne Kohl), her husband Walter (Merab Ninidze) and their daughter, Regina (Lea Kurka and then, older, Karoline Eckertz), are Jews. Walter, a prosperous lawyer and judge in Germany, could see what was happening. He managed to get an exit visa, went as a Jewish refuge to Kenya, and then sent for his family. Regina with help got exit visas, but only reluctantly. The other family members all believed their fellow Germans would come to their senses and the Hitler thing would pass. Nirgendwo in Afrika tells us what happened to Walter, Jettel and Regina. It's an absorbing story which, even in 141 minutes, tries to do too much. Even so, and even if nothing really seems deeply affecting and certainly not tragic, the Redich family and how they changed kept me watching. The movie is rambling but also often affecting.

The best Walter could do was to hire on to run a failing cattle outpost. The land is dry and full of scrub. He writes to his wife asking her bring a number of practical things they will need. She, instead, brings an expensive ball gown. Their house is scarcely more than a large shack. Malaria is always a possibility. The native Kenyans look upon them as curiosities. Water has to be carried from a distant well. In the midst of all this we see three things. Walter knows that staying in Germany would have meant death for them. He's prepared to do what he must to make some sort of life where he is. Jettel is appalled by what she sees and faces. She longs for her family and for the life she had. There, she was married to a prosperous lawyer and judge. Here, she is married to a hired hand. Regina, about six years old, simply accepts everything. Soon she's playing with the native children and picking up their language. The family has a cook, a tall man named Owuor (Sidede Onyulo). Walter tries to deal with him respectfully. Jettel without thinking about it treats him as a servant. Regina as usual simply accepts him as a friend. To give you an idea of the tone of the movie, if Nirgendwo in Afrika were remade by Hollywood, the part of Owuor would undoubtedly be played by Morgan Freeman.

In the course of the movie they make one good friend, a tough fellow Jew who left Germany in 1933. They are interred by the British as a possible threat when war comes in 1939, even though they are refugees from Nazi Germany. They eventually are released. Sexual dissatisfaction abounds. Walter finds employment on a better farm, he joins the British Army and is sent to Burma. Jettel learns how to run the farm and deal with the native workers. Regina grows into a unselfconscious child whose friends are all native children. She learns about being a Jew when she is sent to an English school in Nairobi where the anti-Semitism is more condescending than vicious. In a subtle way Caroline Link, the director, also lets us make our own discoveries regarding the treatment of Jews in Thirties Germany and the treatment of Africans by colonialists. By now we've seen Walter's and Jettel's marriage nearly break apart. We even experience locusts. We also see, gradually, how Walter for all his practicality yearns to return to Germany after the war. We see how Jettel has grown into a responsible, capable woman who has come to love where she is and hates the idea of returning. Regina, or course, simply has become a part of Africa and of the people she knows. Like the movie itself, the conclusion is not quite satisfying and not quite unhappy.

The only serious reservation I have about the movie are the two instances of fairly explicit coupling involving Walter and Jettel. My objections have nothing to do with prudery, but with how sex is usually used to pander to the audience. In both scenes sexual intimacy is used to show us the longing and need for the kind of shared intimacy that includes but goes well beyond sexual need. The director chooses to show us so much skin, so many positions and so much perspiration that, in my view, the audience is simply encouraged to become voyeurs in the name of art. As with most dramas, the more explicit the sex we see, the more the story-line comes to a halt.

Nirgendwo in Afrika won the 2003 Academy Award for best foreign language film. It is beautifully photographed.

Your Review of
Nowhere in Africa
DVD ~ Juliane Köhler

NOWHERE IN AFRICA certainly deserves the Academy Award for Foreign Film 2002 it won. This is an epic story about the human condition that transcends even the semibiographical time it addresses. In short, a happy and well-to-do German family (who happen to be Jewish, mostly in name only) 'escape' to Africa in 1938 just as Hitler is beginning to unfurl his blanket of the Holocaust. The father has proceeded the mother and daughter to find a place to live and a means of support. He is aided (importantly) by a native cook named Owuor (the symbol of universal mankind and spirit) in creating a home away from Germany. The basic theme of the story is how the transplanted Germans adjust to their new home, how the mother (not at all happy about giving up the good life in Germany to dwell among the natives whom she considers inferior people) attempts to inculcate her young daughter on how to stay separate from these 'dirty,untrustworthy' lower caste types. The daughter immediately relates to the gentle Owuor and falls in love with her new life. Matters drive husband and wife apart, they eventually are 'detained' (by the British who see them as Germans not unlike what the US did to the Japanese in WW II)in a camp which for all the world looks like a luxury hotel - without a sense of home. The husband joins the military and eventually the family moves back to their litlle home in the wilderness, survive locusts and famine, and through many trials find each other again. The bite to this film comes mostly from the mother's attitutde towards the Africans: it mirrors the attitude of the Nazis toward the Jews in Germany. How that bite is resolved contains some of the more sensitive movie making in a long time.
The cast is uniformly excellent: Juliane Kohler and Merab Ninidje as the parents, Sidede Onyulo as Owuor, and the two actors who share the role of Regina the daughter - Lea Kurka and Karoline Eckertz. The film is tightly and lovingly directed by Caroline Link, making the most of the vastness and beauty of Kenya. Truly a film to see and see again. In German and African languages with excellent subtitles.