Hemingway & Gellhorn

That Martha Gellhorn was Ernest Hemingway’s third wife only begins to tell the story.   Gellhorn’s work as a war correspondent eclipsed Hemingway’s.  She was also the only one of Hemingway’s wives to kick his butt to the curb.  (A year ago, I had a drink at the Key West bar where Gellhorn, according to local lore,  had paid the bartender $20 to introduce her to Hemingway.)  In HBO’s  Hemingway & Gellhorn, Gellhorn is played by Nicole Kidman and Hemingway by Clive Owen.

Gellhorn once said, “We were good in war. When there was no war, we made our own.”  She’s a prototype of a liberated woman and he’s an unreconstructed alpha male preoccupied with machismo, so things are not destined to end well.  (Thought:  maybe if Hemingway hadn’t thought so much about masculinity, his own masculinity would have been less selfish.)

Theirs is a helluva story, and the movie is an epic.  As the story sweeps across the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet invasion of Finland,  the liberation of China and D-Day, the  2 1/2 hours goes pretty quickly.

Hemingway & Gellhorn is directed by the great Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff,  Invasion of the Body Snatchers,  The Unbearable Lightness of Being). He keeps Hemingway & Gellhorn shifting from color to sepia to black and white, seamlessly mixing in actual historical footage and inserting the characters Zelig-like into the documentary stock.

Kaufman lives in the Bay Area and shot Hemingway & Gellhorn’s Key West, Havana, Carnegie Hall, Finland, Germany and Spain scenes in San Francisco, San Rafael, Livermore and Oakland.

I enjoyed seeing it once, but it’s definitely not a “can’t miss”, and I’m having difficulty putting my finger on why that is.  My guess is that the screenplay lingers on the Spanish Civil War a little too long and then brings on Hemingway’s dissolute period too abruptly.  The acting and the direction are just fine.

HBO has released the trailer for Hemingway & Gellhorn, which will broadcast beginning on May 28.  It’s the story of Ernest Hemingway and his third wife Martha Gellhorn.   Gellhorn was a leggy blonde whose work as a war correspondent leading up to and during World War II eclipsed Hemingway’s.  She was also the only one of Hemingway’s wives to kick his butt to the curb.  Gellhorn is played by the leggy Nicole Kidman.  Clive Owen is Hemingway.

(A year ago, I had a drink at the Key West bar where Gellhorn had paid the bartender $20 to introduce her to Hemingway; I understand that the movie may move the bar to Bimini).

Hemingway & Gellhorn is directed by Philip Kaufman, one of the great American directors.  His masterpiece is The Right Stuff, the story of the Mercury astronauts.  But his remake of the sci fi horror classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers is also excellent.  And I just rewatched his art film about love and sex set in the Prague Spring of 1968 and its aftermath, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and it still stands up.  That’s three top-rate movies in three different genres, an accomplishment few filmmakers can claim.

Kaufman lives in the Bay Area and shot Hemingway & Gellhorn’s Key West, Havana, Carnegie Hall, Finland, Germany and Spain scenes in San Francisco, San Rafael, Livermore and Oakland. Incidentally, earlier this year, Kaufman was in the house at Noir City this year for Bad Girl Night.

I’ve added Hemingway & Gellhorn to Movies I’m Looking Forward To.