Out of Africa (film): I can understand why it won a bunch of Oscars but....

Out of Africa is one of those films that when it went to the awards ceremonies in 1986 it basically won everything. I remember hearing about the film as a young person and even though I didn't particularly care about award ceremonies, I was aware that this movie had won a bunch of them. BUT! It is too long and mostly pretty boring...

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The story is based on actual events, although the writers and directors are very forthcoming about the fact that they took a tremendous amount of liberties and didn't try to make it entirely true.

Basically, a wealthy and unmarried Danish woman accepts an offer of marriage from the brother of her lover (yeah, it starts off awkward) and agrees to move to Africa. The farm they are meant to establish together is funded almost entirely by her family money. She is a city slicker aristocrat and the life in Africa, at first, is very difficult for her to adapt to.

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Very early on in the film she meets Robert Redford's character, Denys. It becomes evident immediately that there is going to be some sort of love story there even if you didn't see it telegraphed on the movie poster.... Wow do they ever take ages to get to it and this is the biggest problem I have with this film. The movie is nearly 3 hours long and good grief does any little event take forever to get moving.

The thing that likely caught the eye of the Academy was the stunning scenery shots, especially the stuff taken from the air. Keep in mind that this was a LONG time before drone technology existed and it must have taken ages to get these shots.

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Every now and then the nature shots, combined with a fantastic score, rivals any sort of stuff you see in films today, more than 30 years later and with superior technology involved. Those awards were certainly deserved and I'm happy they won them. Karen Blixen (played by Meryl Streep) is to this day quite a famous person in Kenya due to how she genuinely tried to help all the people of Africa, including setting up schools and treating the natives much better than most of the colonists at the time (I'm sure this didn't hurt the consideration by the Academy as well.)

Robert Redford's character was a real person but he was not American. Redford accepted the role believing he was going to be acting in an English accent but director Sydney Pollack felt it would be too distracting to the audience and also to Redford.

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The scenery is spectacular and most of the locations are genuinely the real places that these stories took place, including the real house that Karen Blixen lived in (it's now a museum.) In these regards I can understand why it won 7 Academy Awards. However, there is only so much building a coffee farm, making a school, and occasionally flirting with Robert Redford that can happen before I am staring at my phone instead of watching the screen. Not much even happens in the entire film until the end.

My opinion about this film being less-than-thrilling is not an isolated one, even when the film was released many professional critics were saying the same thing about it being too long for the amount of material involved. I suppose they had their reasons. It also made $200 million at the box office so I'm sure the producers were ok with a bit of negative press.

tl;dr

Out of Africa is a famous film from the 80's that wont 7 Oscars including "Best Picture." Despite the fame associated with it the film is regarded by a lot of people (including me) as being too long and the story moves at a snail's pace. With today's entertainment standards deeming that even watching a boring 10-minute Youtube video is arduous, I really don't think this film would do so well today.

At nearly 3 hours long, if you haven't seen it, I don't recommend you do as I don't think it really has stood the test of time very well. The scenery is fantastic and the score and direction are wonderful, but mostly, this thing is a famous snooze-fest