6.4 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
A drama based on the romance between Ernest Hemingway and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, who helped inspire Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the only one of the writer's four wives to ask him for a divorce.
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Clive Owen, David Strathairn, Rodrigo Santoro, Molly ParkerDrama | 100% |
Romance | 48% |
Biography | 27% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
French: DTS 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
Spanish: DTS 2.0
English SDH, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
One's ability to enjoy director Philp Kaufman's HBO original movie Hemingway & Gellhorn greatly depends on one's tolerance for characters who make grand pronouncements and take themselves with utter seriousness. Contemporary viewers often balk at accepting such characters unless they're cloaked in an alternate reality that puts them at a comfortable distance—the remote past or perhaps a fantasy world such as Middle Earth or a galaxy far, far away. Should anyone of that nature pop up today, the immediate assumption is that they're a fraud, a pitchman or, worst of all, a politician. Still, it wasn't so long ago that such people lived, worked and drew huge audiences without the aid of spin or publicists. Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway was one of them, and so was his third wife, war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn was the only one of Hemingway's four wives to maintain her own career. As both mutual admirers and fierce competitors, the two were briefly a celebrity couple in the 1940s, until, like many celebrity couples, ambition split them apart. Hemingway died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1961 at the age of 61, whereas Gellhorn continued working well into her 80s. She died in 1998 of a drug overdose, after a long battle with cancer. As a condition of giving interviews, she would often insist that no questions about Hemingway be asked, saying that she did not wish to be a "footnote in someone else's life". (The line appears near the end of Kaufman's film.) Hemingway & Gellhorn is the result of years of painstaking research, not only in writings, letters and journals by and about the two writers, but also in film archives around the world. Using the latest digital technology, and without ever leaving the San Francisco Bay area, the production has seamlessly recreated a compelling story of two larger-than-life personalities whose collisions played themselves out against a background of cataclysmic events around the world. You don't get a literary education from Kaufman's film; for that, you'd have to read For Whom the Bell Tolls, the novel that Hemingway wrote during the period portrayed in the film and dedicated to Gellhorn. Nor do you get a clear understanding of the history of the Spanish Civil War, the invasion of Normandy or any of the various theaters of World War II on which Gellhorn reported; for that, you'd have to read her dispatches or the history books that have used them as source material. What you do get is a sense of two exceptional, frequently difficult, sometimes dislikeable people, who had the drive to accomplish things that others couldn't and were willing to sacrifice everything in the process, including each other.
Photographed with the Arri Alexa by Rogier Stoffers, the Dutch cinematographer who shot director Kaufman's Quills, Hemingway & Gellhorn owes its final appearance to post-production manipulation even more than most contemporary films, as a result not only of the digital trickery that inserts the actors into archival footage, but also of the constant shifts in palettes and appearance. Each locale has a distinctive color scheme, and editor Walter Murch constantly modulates between a contemporary "you-are-there" style and a historical, "old newsreel" look, complete with scratches and print damage. HBO's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray accurately captures these shifts, which is to say that the contemporary footage is colorful and detailed, and you're much more aware of both qualities when they reappear after having been leeched out of the image digitally for the historical look. Black levels and contrast are accurate, and the only artifacts in the picture are those that have been deliberately placed there to simulate aging or damaged film. In numerous respects, the image on Hemingway & Gellhorn is a tribute to the capabilities of digital cinema to replicate—and even extend—the capabilities of film. The work of Kaufman and his collaborators on this project should be taught in film schools.
Hemingway & Gellhorn won well-deserved Emmy Awards for its soulful score by composer Javier Naverrete (Pan's Labyrinth) and for its elaborate sound editing. Both are thrillingly represented on the Blu-ray's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track. The sound editors have carefully coordinated their work to match Murch's editing choices. Listen, for example, to the forceful impact with which Hemingway strikes the death blow to a huge fish he lands in his opening scene, which provides a key transition to his first meeting with Gellhorn. Sound effects specific to each of the film's exotic environments have been deftly woven throughout, and often amplified for special emphasis; a notable example is the Hemingways' meeting with General and Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek (Larry Tse and Joan Chen), where the noises of the General's dining habits are more noteworthy than anything he says (which isn't much). Of course, the wartime sounds are the most dramatic, and the aerial bombardment of Madrid by Franco's forces registers with tremendous impact, especially for systems equipped with a subwoofer. However, the quality of the sound editing is revealed by how little the experience resembles an action film sequence. The impacts are abrupt, sharp and unnerving. There is nothing "thrilling" about them. The same is true of every scene relating to war. Equally fine sound work can be heard in the Hemingway home in Cuba, where cats are always howling; in the editing room in New York where Ulrich's documentary film is completed (and Hemingway fires Orson Welles as the film's narrator); and at the party following the film's premiere, where Hemingway gets into a fight with a critic. Every one of these environments has been sonically reconstructed. Meanwhile, the dialogue and voiceovers remain clear and distinct, and Naverrete's score casts its spell over the entire affair.
Digital effects have advanced by leaps and bounds since Robert Zemeckis had Tom Hanks interact with former U.S. Presidents in Forrest Gump (1994). Those sequences appear primitive by comparison to what Kaufman has achieved in Hemingway & Gellhorn. Just compare the sequence in which Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman meet with President and Mrs. Roosevelt for an obvious example. Kaufman began experimenting with such techniques as early as The Right Stuff (which appeared in 1983, the same year as Woody Allen's Zelig, another early example) and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), but his latest project breaks new ground in the recreation of past events. For both the story and the way it has been told, highly recommended.
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