- Network: HBO
- Series Premiere Date: May 28, 2012
Critic Reviews
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Both writers come off as passionate egomaniacs with literary gifts so undeniable, you can't help but enjoy them.
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Despite some shortcomings, Hemingway & Gellhorn rates as time and money well-spent.
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That this rich, impressively ambitious film says far more about Martha Gellhorn than about Ernest Hemingway was inevitable.
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A dynamic, vivid, well-acted look at two major 20th century writers who shared wars on the battlefront and at home.
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Get past the first hour and you've got a helluva good tale.
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Kaufman's film, despite some flaws, captures the intensity of their story and pulls us in with the irresistible force of a great, doomed love story.
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HBO's woozy and often intoxicating Hemingway & Gellhorn [is] a sprawling docudrama (overlong at 160 minutes) about glamorous world adventurers whose weapons are words.
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It's not as if Kidman or Owen looks old, exactly. Still, the basic dynamic is a bit out-of-kilter. A lot of the early scenes don't make much sense if the Gellhorn we see is so clearly a mature, experienced woman.
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the film is as smart and sexy as it is extravagantly silly; its silliness is knowing and affectionate.
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Stellar production, famous leads. What's missing? Heart.
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While Hemingway & Gellhorn makes it clear she had world-class writing skills of her own, Gellhorn's story often does feel subsumed here, as if all of Hemingway's swagger and bravado really did make him a more prominent figure, or at least a more interesting one.
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Their inherently compelling story is cheapened by too many gimmicks and a lack of focus, sins that the writers Hemingway and Gellhorn managed to avoid in real life.
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Though it is clearly based on research, with dialogue that scavenges the principals' own writing--it is never quite believable, either as history or drama.
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It offers tantalizing glimpses of other movies it might have been.
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Hemingway & Gellhorn is overly enamored with its ridiculous sense of sweep.
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Hemingway & Gellhorn's daft romanticization of its subjects proves central to its overwrought sense of self.
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Considerable effort and care clearly went into that process, but unlike the city by the Bay, there's not much heart left in Hemingway & Gellhorn.
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Clive Owen teams with Nicole Kidman for a long, lopsided slog through the life of Ernest Hemingway and war journalist Martha Gellhorn. [4 Jun 2012, p.42]
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It's a disheartening misfire: a big, bland historical melodrama built on platitudes about honor and the writing life that crams in actual figures and incidents but does little to illuminate them, or to make us care about the romance at its center.
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Director Philip Kaufman's clumsy, bloated project--clocking in at a miserable two hours and 40 minutes--stars Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman in potentially career-mangling performances.
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A disastrous two-and-a-half-hour Cliffs Notes on the passionate, dysfunctional love affair between Ernest Hemingway (Clive Owen) and his third wife, the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (Nicole Kidman).
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Not only is Hemingway and Gellhorn wretched, it is bathed in pretentiousness and pseudo-intellectual delusions of grandeur. It's not just crap, it's expensive, painfully "artistic" crap starring a lot of actors who should have known better once they took a look at the script, which is hilariously awful.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 14
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Mixed: 6 out of 14
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Negative: 1 out of 14
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Sep 15, 2016
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Jun 3, 2012
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May 29, 2012