I Dreamed of Africa (2000) is the tale of a self-righteous, self-appointed white savioress. The movie opens with the subtitle “A True Story” and closes with a caption claiming that Kuki Gallmann (Kim Basinger) “became a writer and internationally respected conservationist.” An internationally respected conservationist who doesn’t know that “sucking out” the venom of a snake does more harm than good. Here’s a film that’s equal parts ignorance, arrogance, and hypocrisy.
The first act is devoted to Paolo Gallmann’s (Vincent Perez) bizarre courtship of Kuki. They’re both survivors of a car crash that claimed the lives of a bunch of other people who are of no consequence at all. “For a while, I couldn’t remember who else was in the car,” says Paolo. Neither could, for that matter, writers Paula Milne and Susan Shiliday.
Paolo bonds with Kuki and her seven-year-old son Emanuele (Liam Aiken) during and after her recovery from a broken leg. You could cut the sexual tension between Basinger and Perez with a knife — if only there were any.
There is no chemistry, no friction, no sparks, no nothing, but that doesn’t stop the characters from getting married and moving to Kenya. Whatever this relationship lacks in characterization, the script makes up for in exposition-heavy voice-over narration. The film was based on an autobiographical novel of the same name, and Basinger sounds like she’s reading entire passages verbatim.
This stuff, which with a little fleshing out might have been a movie in its own right, has no bearing on the plot. The whole first act should just be backstory. Sure, the accident is the reason that Kuki marries Paolo, and the marriage is the reason that she goes to Africa, but there’s no reason why the film shouldn’t begin and take place entirely in Africa. When Kuki tells us, “I’m divorced, raising a child on my own. I feel a terrible sense of failure … I know this is a chance to find meaning in my life, to give it value,” etc., it makes no difference to her internal monologue whether she’s in Italy or Kenya.
Paolo, in whose memory Kuki “founded the Gallmann Memorial Foundation, which is dedicated to the harmonious co-existence of man with nature,” is a big-game hunter. He’s also meant to be a sympathetic character in an anti-poaching movie. I know hunting and poaching are not quite the same thing, but Paolo doesn’t hunt just for food; he does it for the intoxicating thrill of killing (or being killed by) a wild beast. In his own words, “Out there, there’s just the moment. One error of judgment, one lapse in concentration and it’s your last! I need that!” So much for “the harmonious co-existence of man with nature.”
It soon becomes clear that none of these characters has any understanding of or respect for nature. Paolo is gored (offscreen) by a buffalo; Kuki and Emanuele are, unbeknownst to her until Paolo shows her the tracks, stalked by lions; a 17-year-old Emanuele (Garrett Strommen) succumbs to a snake bite even though he had previously assured Kuki that “They’re only dangerous if you don’t know how to handle them.” He sure got that part right.
Instead of taking the hint and getting the hell out of dodge, because it’s obvious that it’s not just the poachers but the land itself that wants her gone, Kuki dementedly views her loved ones’ deaths as “Africa’s privilege,” exacted in exchange for her own privilege “to look after Africa herself.” Such ego.
It’s appropriate that at one point Emanuele name-drops Kipling, because I Dreamed of Africa reeks of The White Man’s Burden. The Gallmanns seem to regard African people as little more than just another endangered local species, while the actors portraying Kenyans look like they were instructed to stand back in awe of their Caucasian redeemers — so much so that, in a moment of supreme cluelessness in a movie filled with them, Emanuele’s funeral is set (diegetically) to The Melodians’ “Rivers of Babylon.” A song that calls for black liberation and social justice becomes a paean for a dumb white boy who thought he knew how to handle snakes, and who had a dumb white mother who thought she knew how to handle snake bites.
