HEMINGWAY & GELLHORN DVD (2012)

SYNOPSIS: HEMINGWAY & GELLHORN recounts one of the greatest romances of the last century – the passionate love affair and tumultuous marriage of literary master Ernest Hemingway and the beautiful, trailblazing war correspondent Martha Gellhorn - as it follows the adventurous writers through the Spanish Civil War and beyond. As witnesses to history, they covered all the great conflicts of their time; but the war they couldn’t survive was the war between themselves. 

MOVIE REVIEW:

“The first draft of anything is shit” – Ernest Hemingway

Just when you though literary writers are a bunch of boring folks who spent their days hammering at their old, clunky typewriters, Hemingway & Gellhorn proves otherwise.

This HBO Films production traces the tumultuous relationship between Ernest Hemingway and his third wife, Martha Gellhorn. Hemingway of course was one of America’s greatest literary writers and behind the acclaimed The Old Men And The Sea while Gellhorn herself was a great war correspondent.

Told from the perspective of an aged Gellhorn, the movie (a serious, plodding one I must remind you) follows the couple from how they first met in a bar called Sloopy’s Joe to their whirlwind courtship during the Spanish Civil War, a supposedly honeymoon in China and lastly the breaking down of their marriage which is pathetically done in a hurried fashion.

To say that the Hemingways led an extraordinary life is an understatement. Come on, the celebrity couple met some of the most important people in history namely, Mr and Mrs Chiang Kai Shek, Chou En-lai just to name a few and personally been through World War I and II, the Spanish Civil War and other historical events. Director Philip Kaufman (who did the erotic The Incredible Lightness of Being) makes sure these events are covered in this 154 minutes biopic and that includes bizarre sexual acts taking place during an aerial bombardment and backstages. Whether it’s true or not in this case, the scenes only serve to show that Hemingway’s raging hormones were just as impressive as his Nobel Prize. These writers live such exciting life isn’t it?

The most interesting part in this globetrotting romance seems to be the tension rising from this two as Hemingway is shown getting increasingly egoistic, jealous, abusive and feuding with his wife over her job. Reason being he prefers to cosy up with his partner and roughing it up with his gang of unruly friends in his free time, the latter on the other hand prefers to embark on her career being a war correspondent. And well, Hemingway also likes to bash up his critic in public way before the paparazzi era. Yet there aren’t any significant insights into our lead characters. Sad to say, the mere facts we learnt after the whole marriage end was that Gellhorn indeed was a woman with balls and Hemingway was one horny, angry writer.

The obvious lack of a decent budget means a generally display of sparse production sets. To make things worse, plenty of lacklustre greenscreen effects such as characters being shoved digitally into archival footages and unnecessarily transiting from sepia to colour tones were embarrassingly employed. You can’t really fault the performance of the cast members however. Both Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman are exceptional in their portrayal of Hemingway and Gellhorn respectively. Other award-winning actors include Tony Shalhoub (The Monk), David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck), Rodrigo Santoro (Che), Joan Chen (Serangoon Road) plus an uncredited Robert Duvall (Jack Reacher).

It’s definitely a chore to sit through a love story that failed to look deeper into the lives of these two talented folks as you probably expect a little more from Kaufman especially in the storytelling department. Otherwise, the often serious tone and subject might appeal to those searching for intellectual films.  

SPECIAL FEATURES:

NIL

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The DVD preserves the intended classic look of old movies and the Dolby Digital 5.1 offers nothing more than some noteworthy impactful subwoofer effects and a clear dialogue track.

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee