Caroline Link’s Nowhere in Africa is a sprawling epic that tries to be many kinds of film at once, succeeding in a few respects but failing badly in too many others. Part Holocaust survival story, part love story, part the memoirs of a European teen adapting to Africa, and part cultural documentary, its parts fail to meld together into a coherent whole. Based on a novel by Stefanie Zweig, the story plods along like a disjointed series of excerpts from a childhood diary. Nevertheless, some of those excerpts are highly effective as individual scenes.

The Story: Walter Redlich (Merab Ninidze) was a Jewish lawyer in Germany in the 1930’s, well on his way to a successful career, when the rising tide of Nazism brought that career to a screeching halt. Seeing the handwriting on the wall sooner than most, Walter had the foresight to emigrate from Germany to Africa while that option still existed. Now having established himself in Africa, though only as the manager of a rural farm in an arid part of Kenya, he is anxious for his wife Jettel (Juliane Kohler) and five-year-old daughter Regina (Lea Kurka) to join him as quickly as possible. The decision is a difficult one for Jettel, who enjoys her comfortable life in Frankfort, consisting of dinner parties, fine clothes, fancy china, and warm relationships with both her own family and her in-laws. While Jettel prepares to leave behind her pleasant life in Germany, the film cuts back and forth between the elegance of Frankfort and the squalor of Walter’s cabin in Africa, where he is being nursed back to health from a bout of malaria. We can see already that Jettel is in for a heavy dose of culture shock. In his final letter to her, Walter urges her to bring along a refrigerator, leave the china behind, and to buy mosquito nets and some other practical items. Instead, Jettel brings the china and spends her last money of a luxurious evening gown, which will be utterly superfluous in Kenya.

In Africa, the bright, adaptable, and good-natured Regina takes immediately to her new environment, aided by Owuor (Sidede Onyuio), her guardian, mentor, and fairy godfather all rolled into one. The inherent openness and curiosity of the black children in relation to Regina and vice versa doesn’t hurt a bit either. Jettel’s adjustment curve is far more gradual, yet she too gradually comes to love the place and, even, to fit in. Walter’s progression is retrograde, however, as he comes ultimately to yearn for the career back home for which he was educated and had so much talent.

The Redlichs struggle with practical problems like the need for more water as well as cultural problems like communicating with the natives. When the war breaks out, they are interned – Jettel and Regina in a luxury hotel and Walter in a camp – along with other German Jews. This development, of course, flies in the face of all logic, since these folks left Germany expressly because of their opposition to Hitler and the risk to their lives. Ultimately, they are released, but not before Jettel engages in a tryst with a British sergeant to secure the job for Walter that is a prerequisite for his release. Worse, the prescient Regina observes her mother’s infidelity.

Strengths: Possibly the most successful aspect of the film is the marvelous portrayals of life in Africa – both for the transplanted Europeans and the natives. The ngoma (native celebration) and the village’s response to the onslaught of a swarm of locusts are a couple of highlights. The interactions between Regina and the African children are especially touching. She teaches them about witches and fairies; they teach her about warming one’s toes in cow dung and shooting a bow and arrow. There’s a wonderful illustration of conflicting cultures when the teenaged Regina no longer wants to remove her blouse to climb in the trees with her native boyfriend. He finally wins her over! As a series of memorable vignettes that a kid or teenager might record in her diary, the film has real beauty, but, unfortunately, a series of diary entries doesn’t comprise a narrative.

The performances are all very effective – not only those of the professional European performers but the natives as well. I suppose the natives were mainly just doing what they normally do; it all felt very natural and unaffected. One amazing aspect of this film was the exceptionally seamless transition from the younger actress (Lea Kurka) to the teen actress (Karoline Eckertz) who played Regina at two stages in her development. I was uncertain, at first, whether they were the same person or not. Both were adorable.

Weaknesses: One major problem with Nowhere in Africa is that the “love story” is really just a lesson in self-centeredness and marital discord. There are hints of problems with the marriage even before Jettel arrives in Africa. Her father-in-law warns Jettel ominously about the dangers of “unequal love.” “The one who loves the most,” he opines, “is most vulnerable.” No doubt he’s right and viewers soon discover that it is Walter who loves most, though sometimes ineffectively. Next, we see Jettel’s disregard for her husband’s judgment (as the one experienced with life in Africa) about what she should bring with her. After the arrival of mother and daughter, we see further that Jettel is spoiled and unacquainted with manual labor. She is bitter about having been brought to such a god-forsaken place. Walter and Jettel both realize too clearly that Walter is now a very mediocre farmer instead of a brilliant young lawyer. Whether from bitterness or Walter’s diminished stature, Jettel has lost interest in him sexually. Still, it is hard to know if they’ve fallen out of love or were never truly in love in the first place. Walter at least seems like he wants to try to keep their marriage together while Jettel shows little interest in even the effort. Jettel flirts with a German Jewish neighbor and seems on the verge of something more. Later, she has an affair with a British sergeant – ostensibly to secure her husbands release from interment, but she appears all too eager for the “sacrifice.” By the time the war is over, when Walter wants to return to Germany to recover a useful career, she prefers to remain in Africa. It is he who changes plans in order to keep the family intact. There is a little burst of renewed sexual interest between the two of them, but not much evidence of it impacting the broader dynamics of their shaky relationship. Later, when she discovers she’s pregnant, she relents and agrees to follow him back to Germany. One has to wonder whether this marriage is any more secure at the end of the film than it was at the beginning or any other point. It seems as likely to collapse back in Germany as it was in Africa. This is a love story with little real evidence of love at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end. Although Jettel has to shoulder the lion’s share (or lioness’s share) of the responsibility for the fragility of the marriage, Walter has some weaknesses as a spouse as well. He does not share decision-making well with his wife nor exhibit enough tenderness of feelings. The entire exploration of the Redlich’s rocky relationship seldom rises above soap-opera depth or quality.

Most of the dramatic tension of the film is built around Jettel, but unfortunately, she’s just not all that sympathetic a character. When we first meet her she’s both spoiled and naïve (she would have likely died in Germany were it not for Walter’s perceptiveness). Later, we see her as cold and unsupportive toward her husband as well as arrogant and bigoted toward the natives. Still later, we observe her infidelity and near-infidelity. There’s not a lot of reason to root especially hard for her. In addition, the story is told largely from the perspective of Regina (Karoline Eckertz, who plays her as a teen, also acts as narrator), which precludes any in-depth understanding of the internal motivations of the adult characters.

Regina’s story is far more appealing, but lacks much dramatic tension, other than the first few scenes in Africa. We see her grow from a timid German girl who had been afraid of dogs and people alike in Germany into a rambunctious, courageous kid ready to embrace the people, language, culture, and physical environment of her new home. She exhibits so much savvy, intelligence, and spunk that their can be little doubt that she will conquer each challenge that comes along – even the reservations of the headmaster at her school. It’s a joy to watch, but there’s no real doubt about the outcome.

Obviously the most profound issue touched on in the film is the Holocaust. Compared to conditions back in Germany, the problems of the Redlichs in Africa are a cakewalk. Even the internment is trivial in comparison to the news coming from home. Auschwitz was no luxury hotel. The problem, however, is that this places the dramatic tension in the background rather than in the story at hand – the lives of this family in Africa.

The editing of the film is especially weak. For some reason beyond my understanding, there is frequent use of annoying fades to black – as if the narrative was not already disjointed enough. Worse, however, the film rambles endlessly without dramatic pace. Somewhere in the cutting room, a better film was there for the making.

Themes: My favorite bit of dialog from this film also is the one that most lays the primary theme bare. Regina has been posing some weighty questions to her mother, like “Why does everyone hate Jews?” and “Are Jews really different?” Her mother responds with a heartfelt pitch about tolerance, but Jettel has herself frequently exhibited intolerance toward the blacks. The quick-witted Regina has caught her mother in the full blush of hypocrisy. It’s really far more effective in the film than seen in writing below because Regina’s lines are delivered with a look on the sly teenager’s face that seems to say, “I’ve got you now, mom!”

Jettel: “Tolerance doesn’t mean that everyone is the same. That’d be stupid. What I’ve learned here is how valuable differences are. Differences are good.”

Regina: “Mama, the Pokots are celebrating a big ngoma tonight. They slaughtered a cow under the holy tree. There’ll be beer and singing. You have to see it. It is very ‘different’.”

Bottom-Line: Nowhere in Africa won a half-dozen or so German film awards, including best film, and followed that up with a Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. Its triumph at the Academy Awards was tainted a bit, however, by the absence of two strong competitors that were not nominated by their respective countries: Y Tu Mamá También and Talk to Her, both of which were superior films despite risqué content. I recommend this film for its fine performances and marvelous portrayal of life in Africa. Just don’t expect much of a story. Nowhere in Africa is in German (and other languages) with English subtitles. It has an overly long running time of 142 minutes. The American Special Edition DVD version has a highly effective commentary by the director, as well as deleted scenes, a trailer, selections from the soundtrack, and interviews with members of the cast and crew.

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age