A Separate Peace in Exile

"It will all be over in a year or two," an old man says. The woman he is speaking to, his daughter-in-law, eagerly agrees. She asks: "How can this happen to the land of Goethe and Schiller?" as if their legacies alone could somehow ward off evil. Later, he walks to the window and waves at his granddaughter below. The only color brightening the travertine street comes from the red Nazi banners that drape the building opposite.

Based on the autobiographical novel by Stefanie Zweig, Caroline Link's Nowhere in Africa tells one of the most fascinating stories to emerge from the Jewish exodus out of Central Europe, precipitated by the rise of Nazism. It is the tale of the woman, Jettel, and her family who have chosen to flee to Kenya. The tragedy of those who remained behind, confident that their nationality and citizenship would protect them from ultimate persecution, needn't be explained. What is so outstanding about Link's film is the way it treats a secondary effect of Hitler's rise: the difficulty of refuges to start their lives anew in a completely foreign land.

Merab Ninidze plays Walter Redlich, a German-Jewish lawyer who predicted the horrifying turn his country's anti-Semitism would take. Unable to export any of his belongings, he moves to Kenya and serves as a "bwana" on an Englishman's water-starved farm. After much hard work, he convinces the local Jewish community to pay for his family's passage, but only his wife and daughter arrive.

In Africa, the Redlichs are exiles of three degrees: first as whites, second as Germans, third as Jews. The English farmer despises them as "bloody refugees," but Walter has a way with the African natives whom he admires for their knowledge of the earth. Though Jettel (Juliane Köhler) smiles and feigns understanding, she seems ill-prepared for the struggle ahead. Instead of bringing a refrigerator as her husband had requested, she spends the last of their money on an evening gown. "It is beautiful and was on sale," she proudly declares. Walter begins to fear that perhaps his wife loves her husband the lawyer more than her husband the man.

Providing the film's touching observation of this delicate relationship are the eyes and ears of young Regina (Lea Kurka), the Redlichs' daughter. For her, Africa represents a magical land of animals, rituals and myths. She immediately takes to Owuor (Sidede Onyulo), a local tribesman who serves as the family's cook. When she first arrives on the farm, he lifts her out of the car. As she leans in to sniff his skin and touch his hair, we sense that her initiation to Africa is already complete. It is a land without formalities, without strictures, and she blossoms under its open sky.

When war breaks out, Kenya's British administration interns all German nationals as enemy aliens despite the fact that most of them are Jewish and hardly partisans of Hitler. In a particularly memorable scene, the women and children are interned at a luxury hotel. When the British commander complains that serving the prisoners high tea is a bit exaggerated, the manager grows serious and states that, even during war, the hotel won't compromise its standards. Meanwhile, the Anglicized chef wonders why no one is touching the lobster.

All these moments reach us through the filter of Regina's memory and imagination, and the film pulses with their rhythm: her mother's childishness and infidelity, her father's patience and love, the animal sacrifices by firelight, the weeks without rain, the plague of locusts, the African boy with a piercing smile. After the war, her parents consider repatriating to Germany. But as the only Nazis depicted in the film were boys of Regina's age, soon to be husbands and men, we sense that this return would be a great loss, especially to the young and vibrant Regina.