These were not conversations that they held (Finch-Hatton was not the type to allow them... I'm tempted to conclude that they only occur in American fiction, but that's another conversation). They were conversations that Dinesen had with herself, so to speak: mental bargains she made while she was trying to reconcile herself to his physical absence and emotional withholding, which carried over to her writing -- the concept of a rooted female versus a roving male, the idea of deprivation and abnegation as springboards for creativity.

Klaus-Maria Brandauer as Bror Blixen was far closer to his real-life counterpart. And in many ways the formative presence during those years was Farah Aden, Dinesen's haughty Somali majordomo.