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Review by Harvey Karten
3½ stars out of 4
While some people still wonder why there were so few
rebellions by Jews against their Nazi captors, Monday morning
quarterbacks cannot understand why German Jews did not clear
out of that Central European country while the storm troopers
were storming and the fleeing was good. The majority of those
who remained thought that Hitler was such a clown, his ideas so
absurd, that he couldn't last much longer. (Tell that to the Iraqis.)
Leaving Germany meant giving up your property, your assets,
your culture, your family bonds. Several hundred went to
Shanghai, the only city that required no visas. (See
Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amir Mann's documentary, "Shanghai
Ghetto.") Thousands of children were spirited away from their
parents to join foster moms and dads in England. In Caroline
Link's doc, "Nowhere in Africa," one family of Jews go not to a
place with a culture similar to their own but to East Africa, figuring
they'd go back to Europe when the smoke clears but, upon
hearing how successful the Nazis are in tightening their grip over
most of Europe and parts of Russia, they undergo a major
psychological, as well as physical, change. They decide that
Kenya is to be their new home. Or at any rate they do so one at
a time and not without the dandy irony of a role reversal.
"Nowhere in Africa," which won all sorts of awards in its native
Germany and is that country's pick for the Oscar competition in
March 2002, may look at first like Kim Basinger's vanity
production, "I Dreamed of Africa," but Caroline Link's new picture
is far more compelling while providing insight into one family's
conflicts when uprooted, removed from the only culture they know
and love. When the prosperous and Jewish Redlich family,
composed of Jettel (Juliane Kohler), her husband Walter (Merab
Ninidze) and young daughter Kathe (Regina Zimmermann)
tearfully leave their comfortable existence in 1938 as the Nazis
tightened the screws against Jews, they had no idea that while
their lives would be spared, their marriage would almost die, their
daughter mature rapidly, and their outlook on life radically altered.
After getting a job managing a large farm in Kenya's remote,
water-challenged town (filmed in Lolldiaga), they are immediately
befriended by the cook, Owuor (Sidede Onyulo), who teaches
them the language of the Potok clan and helps Walter overcome a
severe bout of malaria. While young Regina (Lea Kurka) takes to
the new culture as only a little kid can, befriending the local
people her own age, Jettel is furious. Discounting that fact that
she's literally a survivor, she is as appalled by her shabby digs out
in nowhere as Heidi Bub is disgusted by her mother's pad in
Vietnam in the movie "Daughter from Danang." She wants out.
Her daughter is the polar opposite, loving the capaciousness and
primitiveness of her new land. Her husband Walter farms the corn
fields and, though a lawyer in his other life, he takes to the beauty
of the landscape and the openness of the people. When Walter
gets antsy after the war and wants to return to Germany to take
up a new appointment as a judge in Hesse, the roles are reversed.
Jettel and their now grown daughter Regina (Karoline Eckertz) like
things just fine while Walter wants out.
Photographer Gernot Roll captures the stark beauty of the land,
with the sacred Mt. Kenya overlooking the activities from a
distance. Roll seems also to be a nature photographer, filming an
invasion of locusts right out of "The Good Earth" with a stunning
close up of one of the little buggers chomping on an ear of corn.
Writer-director Caroline Link provides juicy details:: at the private
school that Regina attends, the headmaster asks the Jewish
children to step aside while the others, the majority, recite the
Lord's prayer. Calling Regina into his office, the school head also
chastises Regina for being like "Jews [who] always think of
money" while expressing surprise that she's at the top of the
class. At one point in 1939, the British, who are the colonial
masters of Kenya, round up the Germans living in the land as
enemy aliens and imprison them in a compound which turns out
to be a luxury hotel with all the trimmings. (The Jews in the group
all turn down the offer of lobster.)
The film has one major technical flaw. The subtitles are
frequently unreadable against light backgrounds. That
said, "Nirgendwo in Afrika" illustrates a terrific example of the
stresses of cultural displacement performed by an excellent
ensemble with a particularly strong support by Kenyan extras of
all ages performing at a sacrificial feast and as curious friends of
the white family.
Copyright © 2002 Harvey Karten
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out of 4
