Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa, 2001)

Caroline Link

Germany

141 min, color, German/English/Swahili (with English subtitles)

Walter Redlich (Merab Ninidze), a Jewish lawyer, having become convinced that emigration is preferable to life under Nazi rule in Germany, leaves for British-governed Kenya to seek employment in preparation to receive his family: wife Jettel (Juliane Köhler) and daughter Regina (Lea Kurka/Karoline Eckertz). Despite the increasing evidence of violent government-sanctioned anti-Semitism in Germany, Jettel finds it hard to abandon the only life she's known but in the end decides to follow her husband (out of love). Life in Kenya is hard on the family, and each tries his or her own way of making do. This is a film about comfort, and about sticking together at enormous costs. In the end, Nowhere in Africa is among the most optimistic films I have recently seen.

Of the three main characters, Jettel is the least appealing although in some ways perhaps the most believable. There is one underlying motive that drives all her actions: the quest for comfort. She is comfortable in Germany, she likes being around friends but, more importantly, likes the life of a socialite lawyer-wife. Despite the escalating tension in the country (wonderfully portrayed by the scene where a Nazi boy knocks her off at the ???? and then pretends it was an accident), Jettel refuses for some time to leave it.

In Kenya, she is dreadfully unhappy with the lack of, well, everything she had gotten used to. Putting up a picture of a German town street on the wall of the rickety hut is as symbolic as it is incongruous. She wants to go back, she whines, she gives her husband the cold shoulder, she refuses to even try to make it work, she wants Owuor to speak German although she must have been aware that the only chance of fitting for her would be to learn Swahili. But she does not want to fit, preferring instead to pretend that this stay is just temporary.

When she realizes that there's no turning back after the news of Kristallnacht arrives to Kenya, her turnaround is astounding. She dusts off the precious china set and decides to make the best of it. Yet, soon the safety she had built around her collapses again when World War II breaks out and the British intern her husband. Very soon she comes to understand that without him it would be impossible to build anything approaching comfort, even by dubious Kenyan standards. So she does not hesitate to sleep with a British officer in return for him arranging Walter's release and job appointment. (It is quite surprising that the Brit actually fulfilled his promise given that he had already, hmmmm, consumed the payment.)

At their new place, Jettel goes native, having convinced herself that this would have to be their permanent home. She becomes more and more comfortable with the customs, the people, the farm, and the country. She even begins to like it. Walter enlists in the British army but she takes it in stride. In fact, she hardly seems to notice. Ironically, Walter, the one who wanted to leave Germany for Kenya is the one who could not fit, having refused to renounce education, culture, or his own heritage.

But then the war is over and Walter (not surprisingly) longs to return to his home and rebuild it from the rubble (figurative and literal) that the Nazis have left it in. In danger of being pulled out of her comfortable existence, Jettel revolts again, this time flatly refusing to follow him home. It will be difficult to live with murderers on the same street, no doubt. But it's doubtful that Walter does not know it. The restless Walter, however, prefers to give it a try. The comfortable Jettel does not.

If seeking comfort was the name of the game for Jettel, this does not make her unique. In fact, a credible case can be made that this was the theme of the entire film despite the anti-Nazi slogans that invariably popped here and there. Link did a great job in not allowing the film to turn into a sappy melodrama that trivializes the horror of the Nazis and the Holocaust by showing one family's triumph against adversity. The war is in the background here, and very natural completely human desires form the rich tapestry of the narrative. Jettel's struggle to adapt, Walter's struggle not to, Regina's effortless, even if temporary, assimilation, even Owuor's attachment to the family. It's all about personal comfort and how people may sometimes easily define and redefine it to avoid feeling frustrated.

That is why Walter is the most attractive character in the film, perhaps because he refuses to take the easy way out. He sees the coming pogroms early on and leaves Germany, realizing (with prophetic accuracy) that the Nazis won't be stopped by fellow Germans. He tries to lie to himself by disrobing and giving away the lawyer's attire and claiming that he'll never need it again. Yet he never invests emotion in any of the farms he runs, it's always someone else's property that he temporarily manages. Only in the very end does he make a slight detour, but only when he realizes how important the farm is to his wife (the locust scene). He enlists to fight the Nazis although it is not clear that he ever sees active combat. When the war ends, he sees the opportunity to return home, to his culture, to people who speak his language, to a society that will respect him as a judge. He is the one that never really fits in Kenya, and so his return is not unexpected.

Regina, of course, has not attachment to Germany, which she barely remembers. As usual, she has the least trouble defining her comfort in terms of fitting in with the people around her. Yet her parents manage to destroy this comfort when they send her off to a British boarding school. Pretty soon the long absence (she only returns to the farm for vacations), the mixing with white children, and (most importantly) the education she acquires, make her feel restless in the wilderness. She does not know what she suddenly longs to return to the school, but her father should have known. (An alternative interpretation here would blame the marital problems but these she had known about for a long time, and it's not clear why they'd affect her so much precisely at this point.) By giving her an "inappropriate" education (because it separates her from her would-be African peers at the farm), her parents virtually ensure that Regina would either have to leave or undergo a painful transformation similar to her mother's.

Told through the eyes of Regina, Nowhere in Africa has a seemingly cursory look at what some would consider turning moments in the character's lives (e.g. her mother's affair with the officer). Curiously, the child's perception turns out to have been correct as all of these events, while causing ripples, hardly disturb the African life at all. Regina's dedication to Owuor (Sidede Onyulo), the proud and very charismatic cook is so truthful and open that one cannot help but accept it full-heartedly (something that one never really can say about Jettel, no matter how many times she asks him to cut her hair). It was also refreshing to see that disarming effect of Regina's naivete when she gets confronted by a somewhat anti-Semitic principal of her boarding school. He begins ready to make a short shrift of her, twisting her achievements by interpreting them as the result of some bizarre Jewish lust for money. Regina does not even understand this but instead answers every accusation with a simple explanation. Her charming innocence is apparent and in the end the Brit finds himself presenting her with a book as a gift.

Very nicely done, although perhaps a bit long, Nowhere in Africa has deservedly won all the awards critics and the public have heaped on it. As a human story about comfort, and as a testament to the power of love, the film shines with engrossing execution and outdoes many similar tales by refusing to be sentimental, if still being a bit unoriginal. Highly recommended.

June 4, 2003