Netflix It! Nowhere in Africa: Movie, DVD Review (2009)

Written and directed by Caroline Link, based on the novel by Stefanie Zweig, 138 minutes, rated R, in German with English subtitles.

Caroline Link's excellent, Academy Award-winning foreign-language film, "Nowhere in Africa," follows the recent "Shanghai Ghetto" and "The Pianist" in exposing another harrowing corner of the Holocaust, stripping it bare of sentiment but, in this case, not of a sense of humor.

Based on a true story, the film follows three German Jews--father, mother, daughter--who flee Frankfurt for the rural flatlands of East Africa in the long, turbulent days leading up to the Nazi stronghold.

It's 1938. One member of the family leaves Germany first--Walter Redlich (Merab Ninidze), the patriarch of the group, who arrives in Kenya to find work at a cattle ranch before sending for his wife, Jettel (Juliane Kohler of "Aimee and Jaguar") and young daughter, Regina (Lea Kurka).

When Jettel and Regina arrive on boat, it's with the belief that all this unpleasantness will be behind them within a year. Two years tops.

As such, Jettel refuses to fully unpack--why bother to find room for the china when their trip will be relatively brief?

Removing from her bags only what she believes she'll need--such as an elaborate gown, which suggests this striking woman has no idea what awaits her in this barren land--she bulldozes through her new shack of a house with the disdain of someone more used to throwing parties than throwing mosquito nets around her bed at night.

Jettel isn't unlikable--far from it. However, she is complex, an alien in a foreign country struggling to come to terms with the difficulty of her circumstances.

That she loves her daughter is clear. Also clear is that her strained relationship with Walter could crumble at any moment. Indeed, part of the film's underlying tension comes from the lingering doubt that this man and this woman--this family--will be able to remain intact through the defining years to come.

You certainly hope so, if only for the sake of Regina, a special girl who is deeply shy when she leaves Germany, but who finds in Africa a place and a people that help to round her into a remarkable young woman (played by Karoline Eckertz), one whose relationship with the family cook, Owuor (Sidede Onyulo), is among the movie's best qualities.

Winner of five German Film Awards, including Best Picture, and beautifully acted by a great cast, "Nowhere in Africa" deals honestly with the past, refusing to romanticize the proceedings and thus ask us to feel something that's false and manufactured.

With some exceptions, that's the difference between a film made with a European mindset and one made with a Hollywood mindset, the latter of which is more inclined to pat our hands when all is said and done in an effort to reassure us that all is okay with the world.

Directors like Caroline Link know better, and in her work, you find electrifying jolts of the truth.

Grade: A