My favourite movie: 2 - Out of Africa

The soundtrack starts - John Barry - and then the voice over: 'I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills...' and then come the endless sobs of my crying over the perfection of that movie - mostly starting when Meryl Steep's name appears on the screen.
The story of baroness Karen von Blixen - well actually it starts with Karen Dinesen - an unmarried (weatlhy) woman who offers her friend Baron Bror von Blixen to marry her, mostly because it was convinient for both of them. They move to Kenia (guess where) and at the foot of the Ngong Hills they run a coffee plantation. No, Karen runs a coffee plantation because Bror is never around and of course she never expected her to actually fall in love with him. But then, when Bror von Blixen leaves yet another time and she stays alone, she falls in love with Denys Finch Hatton. And THERE is where the real interesting story begins: a beautiful love affaire with a tragic ending.

Robert Redford as Denys Finch Hatton 

                                                                 

Can I say that I am in love with John Barry's soundtrack? And with the clarinet concerto from Mozart used in the movie? You know, the grammophone... ? I listen to it when I write. It's one of the most beautiful soundtracks I've ever heard, since I am addicted to movie soundtracks.


As you probably already remarked, every time I begin to love something or someone, doesn't matter whether it's a person, a film, a book or music, I feel this urge to obsess about it, which - believe me, I didn't do it on purpose - I did with Karen von Blixen as well. That explains the fact that my twitter name is @Mrs_Blixen... So, I went to the library, hopelessly searching after Karen Blixen somewhere, or Isak Dinesen (her pseudonym) and I didn't find her. But I asked if there was any Blixen in the storage, and guess what, Out of Africa was there, waiting for me to read it. I took it home, immediately started and the first thing I read was; 'I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills...' and I basically started crying. I never finished the book, and I want to kill me for it. It's very long, just as the movie. I had to pull me through the pages (don't get me wrong, it was beautifully written, every sentence was a small piece of art) and I waited and waited and waited and waited until she would name Denys. She never did. Appearantly, the lovestory comes from her Memoires 'Letters from Africa'. And guess what, again? I am going to the library, spend my whole afternoon there to find it, no matter what. And I promise, Karen, that I will read your beautiful novel 'Out of Africa' one day.

While I was in my obsession with Karen Blixen, I googled her and wanted to find more information about her than I did on Wikipedia. I found a very, very interesting site (karenblixen.com) and these are the most remarkable things I read:
-Bror von Blixen was her second cousin. Basically, they had an incest relationship...
-She was actaully madly in love with Bror's twin brother, Hans.
-Appearantly, some sources say that Denys was gay. Yes. Gay.
-When Karen returned to Denmark, later on, she fell in love with a much younger Danish writer. They never had a relationship.



The ever beautiful, talented Karen Blixen, an inspiration to me, died from malnutrition, probably a result of syphilis, at the age of 77 in 1962.

"Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the earth was made round,

so that we would not see too far down road."