From Denmark, The Pact is a dour, sobering portrait of literary sensation Baroness Karen von Blixen at age 63, after she lost both her beloved farm in Africa and her lover, adventurer Denys Finch Hatton, in a plane crash. In the cherished film Out of Africa, they were played memorably by Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. No such glamor here. The Baroness is played, still coldly beautiful but ravaged with syphilis, by the distinguished Danish actress Birthe Neumann, regal, famous and wise but desperately lonely. The film is about her final years and her unrequited love for a promising young poet who gave her false hope for romantic years ahead, then deeply disappointed her by turning out to be alarmingly…conventional.
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THE PACT ★★★ |
Directed by critical darling Bille August (Pelle the Counqueror) this well-made cerebral biopic is set in the year 1948—the Nazis have left the Danes to their own brand of postwar nobility, and the Baroness has bathed in world-wide success after the publication of her autobiography, Out of Africa, written under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Comfortable, revered, her place secured in both literature and popular culture, the Baroness lives out her days publicly in her remote, lavishly appointed country mansion Rungstedlund, giving dinner parties and interviews, but privately writhing in crippling pain from both her syphilis and the excruciating mercury poisoning she suffers from its punishing medications. Into her unhappy, isolated life enters a handsome, charming, and talented writer, three decades younger, named Thorkild Bjornvig (played by Simon Bennebjerg). Thorkild’s vulnerability and long, lanky boyish appeal quickly win over the Baroness, who offers him guidance, financial support, and quiet, inspired living quarters at Rungstedlund to grow and expand as a poet. The situation would be idyllic even if it remained sexually unconsummated, but for one major snafu: Thorkild is married. For his wife, a dull librarian, the Baroness has scant tolerance. But for Thorkild, true love for the woman he married remains unshaken. To protect herself from heartbreak and still guarantee her young protege’s personal affection and professional dependence, she forces him to make a pact—total loyalty, financially and creatively, in exchange for his promise to trust her unconditionally. The resulting passion works both ways, although the Baroness struggles to accept his emotional distance.
When Thorkild suffers a concussion from a fall, his mentor insists he move in permanently so she can look after him in luxury. Torn between the privileged life at Rungstedlund that feeds his secret ambition for career success and a genuine love for his wife and child, he falls victim to the celebrated Isak Dinesen sarcasm whenever he tries to go home to his family. She patronizes him. She insults him. She calls his longing for a stable home life “meatball deficiency, the cause of your inefficiency…or is an evening in the company of mediocrity supposed to lift you up?” When he proclaims marriage and family a normal pursuit, even for a poet, that requires no explanation, she lashes out with “Wife! You, who read Nietzsche, Goethe, Rilke…can you quote me when was the last time you read that word in a work of art? Can you quote me even one poem that includes the word wife?”
She improves his life, but severely impacts it, too, sending him to Bonn for a literary position, then encouraging him to have an affair with a close friend. It ends badly for them both. She taught him the value of genuine artistic freedom, but not until he went home to his wife did he learn the more important value of personal inner peace. Breaking the pact and saying goodbye is the most touching part of the story. Years later, Thorkild finally earns his own critical praise by publishing a memoir about his years with Isak Dinesen called The Pact, from which this film is adapted. It’s not a film for every taste, the screenplay by Christian Torpe moves so slowly that it often comes to a complete standstill, but it remains a fascinating footnote to the story of Isak Dinesen and the impossible standards that defined her accomplishments and failures. A riveting homage to an extraordinary force as dynamic as she was unique.
Observer Reviews are regular assessments of new and noteworthy cinema.