Hemingway & Gellhorn

This is one of those free HBO weekends at our house that the uVerse people seem to offer twice or so a year and I've been exploring the channel's current movie selection.  I was happy to see that the recent movie Hemingway & Gellhorn is on offer right now, along with what turned out to be a good adaptation of Water for Elephants.  I've watched both of them now, but it is the Hemingway movie that I found most interesting.

Hemingway & Gellhorn is an HBO film that has been airing on the pay channel since late May.  It focuses on the years from 1936 to the mid-1940s primarily but, in a  flashforward to the end of his life, the movie ends with Hemingway's suicide .  The pair first met in a Key West bar that Martha, in the company of her mother and brother, dropped into during their travels around the world.  Martha Gellhorn, a pioneering female war correspondent of the day, managed to get herself to the Spanish Civil War before Hemingway arrived - but once he did get there, the real fireworks began.  If the HBO movie is to be believed, Hemingway's second marriage didn't have a chance of survival from that moment on.

Gellhorn would prove to be an inspiration to Hemingway in more ways than one, thankfully, and he would credit her with inspiring him to write his now classic For Whom the Bell Tolls.  For obvious reasons, readers will enjoy this movie a lot, so I am a bit shocked, though thankful, that this kind of film is still being produced amongst all the junk that Hollywood markets today.  If this is an indication that the  baby-boom-market is still worth catering to, there should be some great stuff yet to come as we continue to age.

Side note: One thing about the movie did bug me a little.  Gellhorn, of German extract, was born in Missouri and, for the most part, Nicole Kidman nails the accent, but when it slips, it really slips, and it is distracting to hear the character speak with a British (not Australian) accent.  But this is still a great movie.