From Tzivi’s July ’12 Spotlight:
On Cable: Hemingway & Gellhorn
Sorry to say, I found HBO’s new epic Hemingway & Gellhorn quite disappointing. Despite its 155 minute run time, the core of the film (covering the Spanish Civil War in 1937) is muddled. And adoring scenes of Martha Gellhorn watching Ernest Hemingway type (as if she were first learning how to be a writer) made me grit my teeth.
Despite the Jewish team behind-the-camera (consisting of director Philip Kaufman and screenwriters Jerry Stahl and Barbara Turner), there is nothing Jewish about Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of Gellhorn. She was one of the first journalists to arrive at Dachau after it was liberated (an experience vividly described in her 1948 novel Point of No Return), and she covered developments in the new state of Israel through-out the ‘50s and ’60s. (Articles from these decades can be found in her collection The View from the Ground.) So Gellhorn’s Jewish background was a fundamental part of her identity, but you’d never know it from watching this. Hemingway & Gellhorn is available on On Demand. A DVD version is in the works.
Click here for more information about Hemingway & Gellhorn on Amazon
Photo Credit: Karen Ballard (2012)
