Robert Redford & Meryl Streep in 'Out of Africa': Best Picture 1986

All the movies we’ve never seen

It’s Oscar season. Time for all the heavyweights to come out and play. Today’s Saturday Matinee features the Academy Award winner for Best Picture thirty years ago this year. Starring my all time fave Robert Redford and the oft-nominated Meryl Streep. Out of Africa counts as one of her 19 20 Oscar nominations! Poor Bobby, he’s only been nominated the one time for his work as an actor. That was for The Sting and he lost.

#SaturdayMatinee

Based in part on Karen Blixen’s memoir Out of Africa published under the pseudonym Isak Dineson, the film tells the story of a Danish plantation owner (Streep) in Kenya, unhappily tethered in a marriage of convenience, who falls in love with a free-spirited big game hunter (Redford).

It’s been thirty years since the film was released in theaters. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, Out of Africa won seven of them including Best Picture. I must have see the movie when it first came out but my memory is vague at best. I can see the two of them, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford together, but they’re not entirely clear. It’s almost like I’m blinded by the glare of bright golden sunlight that bathes them. Let’s face it, these are a couple of major movie stars. And thirty years later, they’re still making movies and contributing to the world of cinema in a very big way. 

The Right Chemistry

Watching the trailer [below] it’s clear to me I never saw this movie! It’s just as clear that I need to. 

Speaking of Out of Africa’s stars Redford and Streep, Roger Ebert noted in his 1985 review ...

“These are high-voltage stars, and when their chemistry is wrong for romances (as Streep's was for Falling in Love, and Redford’s was for The Natural), it is very wrong. This time, it is right.”

Ah, yes, I remember it well

If like me, it turns out you’ve never actually seen Out of Africa either, the Sydney Pollack directed movie is available to stream on Amazon, Vudu, Google-Play, iTunes and YouTube. Watching the trailer, seeing Redford and Streep together, I can’t help but wonder about seeing them onscreen again in something wonderful. Not just a cozy old romance about long lost love but something meaningful and majestic, as well as romantic. I have no idea what, I don’t have a project in mind or a particular book I’d like them to adapt. But it’s worth thinking about. Any ideas?

parts of this post originally appeared on 9/3/2015