''A Far Off Place'' (aka ''Far Off Place'' and ''Kalahari'') is a 1993 American

adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...

based on

Laurens van der Post Sir Laurens Jan van der Post, (13 December 1906 – 15 December 1996) was a South African Afrikaner writer, farmer, soldier, educator, journalist, humanitarian, philosopher, explorer and conservationist. He was noted for his interest in J ...

's works ''A Far Off Place'' (1974) and its prequel, ''A Story Like the Wind'' (1972). It stars

Reese Witherspoon Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon (born March 22, 1976) is an American actress and producer. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, she ...

, Ethan Randall,

Jack Thompson Jack Thompson may refer to: Sports * Jack Thompson (footballer, born 1892) (1892–1969), English footballer who played for Sheffield United and Bristol City * Jack Thompson (1920s footballer), English footballer who played for Aston Villa and Brig ...

and Maximilian Schell. The plot concerns three young teenagers who must cross the

Kalahari Desert The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savanna in Southern Africa extending for , covering much of Botswana, and parts of Namibia and South Africa. It is not to be confused with the Angolan, Namibian, and South African Namib coastal d ...

to safety when their parents are murdered by a

poacher Poaching has been defined as the illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights. Poaching was once performed by impoverished peasants for subsistence purposes and to supplement meager diets. It was set a ...

. ''A Far Off Place'' was filmed in

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

and

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...

from May to September 1992.

Plot

Against his wishes, spoiled New York young Harry Winslow accompanies his father to Africa's Kalahari Desert to spend time with family acquaintances Paul and Elizabeth Parker. Harry clashes with the Parkers’ spirited 14-year-old daughter Nonnie, who wants to follow in her dad's footsteps as a wildlife commissioner fighting Africa's

elephant Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae ...

s. That night, Nonnie and the family dog, Hintza, sneak out of the house to meet her bushman friend, Xhabbo. Harry follows them to a cave, where they spend the night helping Xhabbo recover his strength after he is attacked by a leopard. At dawn, Nonnie returns to the house to discover that her parents and Harry's father have been murdered for investigating the export of ivory, a poaching operation secretly run by Paul Parker's associate, John Ricketts. Nonnie hides from the poachers but Ricketts realizes Nonnie and Harry are missing. Nonnie manages to grab explosives and attaches them to the bottom of the poachers' truck, killing several of Ricketts’ men. She flees to the cave and Xhabbo advises them to “follow the wind” by heading west across the

. On the edge of the desert, Xhabbo communicates with a herd of elephants and convinces them to cover their tracks by following behind. Harry is furious to learn they have 2,000 kilometers to travel before reaching the seaport of Karlstown, but Nonnie remains optimistic. Meanwhile, the Parkers’ close friend, Colonel Mopani Theron, learns of the attack and, unaware of Ricketts' involvement, orders Ricketts to lead an aerial search party to find the missing children. Harry attempts to flag down an approaching helicopter, thinking they are being rescued, but Nonnie warns they could be poachers and says they should hide. Harry stuffs their clothes with straw to make fake decoy bodies which they place in the sand. In hiding, the kids watch in horror as the helicopter passengers gun down the straw bodies. Nonnie catches sight of the perpetrator and reveals it was Ricketts. Over the next two months, the runaways dig up plant roots for sustenance, and Xhabbo teaches Harry how to speak his native language and hunt gemsbok. Col. Theron remains convinced that the Parkers’ death was a corporate conspiracy and continues his tireless search for the exporters’ store of elephant tusks, which he believes will lead him to the murderer. Nonnie and Harry are forced to leave Xhabbo behind when he gets injured by a scorpion. While wandering in search of water, Nonnie collapses in the sand. Hearing the hum of Ricketts’ approaching helicopter, Nonnie and Xhabbo weakly thump their chests in the spiritual Bushman practice of “tapping,” which summons a sandstorm that forces Ricketts to flee. Unaware they are only a few yards away from the Atlantic coast, the three youngsters fall unconscious and awaken in a Karlstown hospital. There, Nonnie is reunited with Col. Theron and informs him that Ricketts was responsible for her parents’ deaths. Once they recover, Nonnie and Harry accompany Col. Theron to Ricketts’ mining facility, where they find his hoard of elephant tusks. They rig the place with dynamite just as Ricketts arrives. Nonnie and Harry are able to lead Ricketts outside and light the fuse. Ricketts runs back into the mine trying to extinguish the flame, but the dynamite explodes and buries him beneath the rock. Sometime later, Nonnie and Harry say goodbye to Xhabbo, who returns to the Kalahari. Harry kisses Nonnie before boarding an aircraft home to New York, and Nonnie tells him to leave without looking back. However, as she and Col. Theron begin cleaning the charred remains of the Parker home, Harry returns, and the children embrace.

Cast

as Nonnie Parker * Ethan Randall as Harry Winslow *

as John Ricketts * Sarel Bok as Xhabbo *

Robert John Burke Robert John Burke (born September 12, 1960) is an American actor known for his roles in '' RoboCop 3'' (1993), '' Tombstone'' (1993), and '' Thinner'' (1996). During the 2000s Burke became well known for his portrayal of Mickey Gavin on '' Rescue ...

as Paul Parker *

Patricia Kalember Patricia Kathryn Kalember (born December 30, 1956) is an American actress, best known for her role as Georgiana "Georgie" Reed Whitsig in the NBC drama series, ''Sisters'' (1991–1996). Kalember also had the leading roles in the number of televi ...

as Elizabeth Parker *

Daniel Gerroll Daniel Gerroll (born 16 October 1951) is an English theatre, television and film actor. Life and career Gerroll was born in London, the son of Kathleen Cordelia (née Norman), a fashion model, and Harry Gerroll, a clothing designer. Gerroll h ...

as John Winslow * Maximilian Schell as Col. Mopani Theron *

Miles Anderson Miles Anderson (born 23 October 1947) is a British stage and screen actor, born in the colony of Southern Rhodesia, who has appeared in television serials both in the United Kingdom, and North America. He recently appeared as Alistair the phot ...

as Jardin * Taffy Chihota as Warden Robert * Magdalene Damas as Nuin-Tara

Production

Principal photography was in

and

in from May to September 1992. It was the directorial debut of cinematographer

Mikael Salomon Mikael Salomon (born 24 February 1945) is a Danish cinematographer, director and producer of film and television. After a long cinematography career in Danish cinema, he transitioned to the Hollywood film industry in the late 1980s earning two ...

. The aircraft featured in ''A Far Off Place'' were: * Cessna 180G Z-WLK * Bell 206B JetRanger III, ZS-HAJ * Cessna 421A Golden Eagle, Z-WMB * Boeing 707-330B

Reception

On review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds a score of 45% based on reviews from 11 critics, with an average rating of 5 out of 10. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale. Film critic Roger Ebert criticized the plot and the level of violence. Awarding the film two stars, he singled out the film's premise which requires the characters to cross 2,000 kilometers to find help: "As perhaps the only American film critic who has in fact crossed the Kalahari Desert, twice, I could have saved them a lot of trouble. There were dozens of towns and villages within 100 miles of their starting place, and Cape Town itself would have been less than 2,000 kilometers away". He also noted the film's similarities to the 1971 Australian film ''

Walkabout Walkabout is a rite of passage in Australian Aboriginal society, during which males undergo a journey during adolescence, typically ages 10 to 16, and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months to make the spiritual and traditiona ...

''. Ebert praised the performances and the photography, the latter which he said "captures the forms of the sand dunes with real poetry". In addition, Ebert positively cited "the scenes where the young Bushman (Sarel Bok) teaches...survival lore, tells he kidsthe legends of his people, and laughs uproariously at their

Westernized Westernization (or Westernisation), also Europeanisation or occidentalization (from the ''Occident''), is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in areas such as industry, technology, science, education, politics, econo ...

behavior". He lamented the film's strengths gave way to tired plot conventions and scenes of violence that are arguably above a

PG rating The Motion Picture Association film rating system is used in the United States and its territories to rate a motion picture's suitability for certain audiences based on its content. The system and the ratings applied to individual motion picture ...

. Film historian and critic

Leonard Maltin Leonard Michael Maltin (born December 18, 1950) is an American film critic and film historian, as well as an author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives. He is perhaps best known for his book of fi ...

had mixed reactions to the storyline. He considered the plot "borderline-slow but head-on straight", and said that the "frank treatment of death makes this iffy for young kids, but older children should find it rewarding."Maltin 2011, p. 443.

References

Bibliography

* Maltin, Leonard, ed. ''Leonard Maltin's 2012 Movie Guide''. New York: New American Library, 2011 (originally published as ''TV Movies'', then ''Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide''), First edition 1969, published annually since 1988. .

External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Far Off Place 1993 films 1990s adventure drama films American aviation films American children's adventure films Films based on multiple works of a series Films based on South African novels Films set in Africa Films set in deserts Films shot in Namibia Films shot in Zimbabwe Amblin Entertainment films Walt Disney Pictures films Films directed by Mikael Salomon Films scored by James Horner 1993 directorial debut films 1993 drama films 1990s English-language films 1990s American films