Sydney Pollack: Out of Africa
Out of Africa is
one of those “sweeping epics” the Academy loves so much, so it’s no wonder that
it – and not better films like Three Days
of the Condor or Tootsie – won Pollack
his Oscars for directing and producing. I put "sweeping epic" in scare quotes because Out of Africa, although decent at times, is painfully ordinary in how it tries to win the audience over as a big, 'ol fashioned epic. It wants to be big in scope and sprawling in its love story; however, Out of Africa is not even close to being Pollack’s best film (in
fact, of the five films nominated that year, it’s easily the fifth best of the
bunch). It’s too satisfied with its “scope” to be anything more than a
pandering awards season picture. It has some nice, quiet moments between its
two leads (nothing new for a Pollack film), but the episodic nature of the
narrative left me feeling cold. In fact, while watching Out of Africa, my mind was drawn to 1995's The English
Patient (another film that feels like a false epic): an apt comparison in that it too was just an okay movie with some decent performances that isn’t nearly
as romantic or sweeping in its scope as the Academy hype wants us to believe. I certainly didn't have any Elaine Benes outbursts while watching Out of Africa, but it did fill me with a kind of apathy that I've rarely felt while working my way through Pollack's films (the only thing that really comes close is Absence of Malice or Bobby Deerfield).
