The New Yorker has a good post, “Remembering Sydney Pollack:”
Finding the spine of a story like “Out of Africa” was important to Sydney for many reasons, the most important of which was that it led to what he called “the ache.” The ache is self-explanatory if you’ve seen Sydney’s films. It is the ache of having one chance at deep love in a lifetime of shallow loves, and losing it too early. It is the ache of perfect, private union destroyed by terrible, worldly circumstance. For Sydney, the ache was about the way that the things we hold most dear always elude us.
The ache is exactly what I relate to, what I look for and enjoy in so many movies and so many songs. It’s why I loved Out of Africa when I first saw it, accidentally, a couple years ago. And it isn’t a surprise why I’ve enjoyed so much of Pollack’s other work.
So long, man, and thanks for everything.