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Sydney Pollack
While there were movies by the recently deceased director Sydney Pollack that I did not care for, especially his big hit Tootsie (1982), he made several first rate films, especially those with emotionally restrained protagonists played by Robert Redford or Paul Newman. The ones that stand out are: The Way We Were (1973), Three Days of the Condor (1975) Absence of Malice (1981) (an excellent movie requiring two or three viewings to follow the plot, but it’s worth it, as it really holds together in a morally satisfying way), and Out of Africa (1985). While some critics thought it was ridiculous for Pollack in the latter film to cast Redford as the English adventurer and Karen Blixen’s love interest Denys Finch Hatton, it worked, as Redford’s combination of glamor and impenetrable inaccessibility made him very much like the Finch Hatton of Isak Dinesen’s beautifully written book, the objective correlative of Africa in accord with her theme of unreturned love: “If I know a song of Africa, does Africa know a song of me?” While the movie leaves out many things from the book I wish had been included, namely Karen Blixen’s stories of her farm in Africa and her dealings with her Kikuyu employees, and focuses too much on the affair with Finch Hatton (in fact, much of the personal material in the movie comes from books other than Out of Africa), it nevertheless captures the essential quality of the book, a kind of noble sadness.
Richard O. writes:
I was enthralled by a book called Out in the Noonday Sun by Valerie Pakenham. It is nonfiction about the Kenya of Isak Dinesen’s account, and after. I highly recommend the audiobook version which was superbly narrated.Spencer Warren, who writes movie reviews at Conservative Battleground, writes:
I consider Pollack a competent craftsman, but not an interesting director. I agree on Absence of Malice, but think Redford is just awful in Out of Africa. Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 03, 2008 08:52 PM | Send Email entry |