![]() ![]() Klaus Maria Brandauer as Baron Bror von Blixen (whew! - who called Karen "Tannen," adding to my initial confusion) perfectly portrays that fun man you like immensely but could never really trust with anything important like your feelings. What was crafted out of a mishmash of a more-or-less factual account and director Sydney Pollack's vision is still a beautiful love and adventure story in the midst of British colonial rule and an earlier, more racially and sexually biased era. Also, without an understanding of the historical times, it would be too easy to say simplistically that this is a woman trying to live within the terms of a marriage of convenience and then compensating with pursuit of a doomed passion. You'll have to get over it, except that I think the character development suffered the loss of Blixen's deep involvement with the displaced Kikuyu tribe working her coffee plantation. The screenplay resembles Isaak Dinesen's semi-autobiographical book very little even so, she did not tell the whole truth in her book. Suffice to say there is a theatrical version and a Disney TV version, with little consequential difference to the plot except that the latter edits out a little of Karen's physical lovemaking with Denys and slightly expands her intellectual relationship with Farah which to some degree helped buttress the development of his absolute devotion to her. There are two movie cuts floating around, which I tried to pursue through Universal, and then Disney. But these are merely the window dressings. I said to my husband, "We've just seen the Academy Award winner." If I had no other basis for recommendation, I would say the breathtaking cinematography and transporting musical score would make a viewing worthwhile (case in point: the main theme playing as Denys Finch Hatton gives Karen Blixen her first airplane ride, and we what she sees, as God must have seen it). I'm not always so prophetic, but I was incredibly moved. As it ended, the audience sat motionless and quiet for several beats, then burst into loud applause as the ending credits rolled. ![]() I watched it for the first time in the theatre. My favorite movie of all time, hands down. ![]()
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