User Reviews

Ernest Hemingway's life was magnificent, troubling, and contradictory. This film shows many sides of the man. For fans of his writing, he gave us an undeniable gift; a window into worlds we might never have known about otherwise, certainly not through his lens, told in his tactile, hard earned, innovative style with symbolic highlights. I am a fan of his writing.

Some aspects of his life I knew vaguely about before seeing this documentary is that he spent time in Paris, Africa, and Cuba, as well Madrid as a journalist who wrote extensive reports of the Spanish Civil War. The compelling coverage of this period of his life in the film has set his novel For Whom The Bell Tolls back on my 'to read' list, having last read it as a teen. I still think of this line from it ~ "If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it."

It seems unwise to idolize someone because of their art. There are several artists, filmmakers, and musicians whose art I revere, though I may have moral disagreements with or discomfort about some action they have taken. Also, one's life story can be easily misrepresented in the telling of it; I believe the only one who holds the full truth is the person to whom that life belonged. That being said, there are some shocking anecdotes, letters, and more in Ken Burns' fascinating documentary about Ernest Hemingway that are hard to ignore. Among accounts of a troubling childhood, spousal abuse, and other sorrowful tales, it's especially difficult for me to stomach killing animals for sport. I try to imagine that this was how he was raised and conditioned, but I can't get past the brutality of this unnecessary macho carnage.

Another aspect of his story that disturbs me is that doctors gave Hemingway a plethora of medications; he got multiple, overlapping prescriptions for psychiatric drugs, and his problems worsened; this piling on of these substances would undoubtably cause negative effects. Bad psych drug effects often lead to misdiagnosis based on the very 'personality labels' the drugs have caused. People are then treated by more drugs, and in Hemingway's case, by electroconvulsive 'therapy' (ECT) several times.

There are anecdotes by people who experience ECT as a positive, failed, or horrific intervention for themselves or their loved ones. Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) was first administered in 1938. The first study, in 1951, showed that people who had had ECT fared worse than those who hadn't. The first time ECT was attributed to his recovery.... but did he recover? The second time he suffered devastating short-term memory damage, which rendered him unable to think or write, took away any quality of life for him, and led to his suicide.

Ken Burns' and Lynn Novak's three part 'Hemingway' is an emotionally compelling and to me somewhat depressing documentary about the life of the great writer Ernest Hemingway. I appreciated Jeff Daniels' contribution in speaking as Hemingway. It was fascinating to hear the interview with Hemingway's son and to see clips of the author himself. My few thoughts about it here hardly convey the scope of the project. I write to process what I have seen; the parts that disturbed me have lingered.

This painstaking biography finally separates Hemingway the man from his apparently carefully self-cultivated myth. Full of contradictions, Hemingway was a communist AND a government conservative - a man's man who was open about enjoying sexual role play as a woman. He refused throughout his life to be defined or categorized. Returning from the battle fields of WW I, rejecting his suburban Illinois home and its mores - he reaped the rewards and punishment of a an extreme life lived on the edge. Most striking are two themes. First is the destructiveness of his closest relationships. He came from a tortuous family history of deep depression and frequent suicides. His first wife "accidentally" lost 2 years of irreplaceable work, his third wife left him in the hospital with a serious brain injury to compete with him as a WW II journalist, and his fourth wife neglected to lock up the gun cabinet upon his return from a locked mental ward due to suicidal tendencies. Second is Hemingway's inability to recognize his own physical limits. Hemingway experienced a debilitating brain injury from a serious car accident resulting in a subdural hematoma (internal bleeding of the brain), but continued to engage in extremely risky travel without allowing time for recovery. Ultimately he compounded his injury with two additional serious concussions These brain injuries, as they are wont to do, appeared to have changed his personality to the extent that he completely alienated his beloved adult children, who completely renounced him. At the end of his life, Hemingway is a tragic figure. Despite earning wealth, fame and even the Nobel prize through his deeply felt artistic integrity and talent, in the end he was banished from his beloved home and community of over 20 years in Cuba due to the Castro coup. He was completely bereft from the loss of his memory and mental faculties, due to a combination of barbarous electroshock therapy, legally prescribed narcotics, and alcoholism. The similarities with Marilyn Monroe's life trajectory - another legendary contemporary "woman's woman" to his "man's man"- are striking. One cannot help but admire the man who lived life on his own terms, or in his own powerful words, "Wouldn't it be pretty to think so."

I think it's time for you to put the camera down and move on to other things ... or maybe do a documentary about yourself.

I couldn't watch the whole thing, there was nothing new except for the gender card trick. And this was looked at when The Garden of Eden was released in 1986.

I'd recommend spending your time reading Hemingway, or anyone else for that matter, instead of watching this documentary.

The Heminway bio covers all of the essentials for anyone interested in him. I found The Snows of Kilimanjaro to be self indulgent. The movie adaptation of Farewell to Arms with Gary Cooper was pretty good. However, as a human being...EH seemed to be a mess. Womanizing, judging his parents, spending lots of time indulging in bull fights, hunting, sport fishing and getting drunk. Seems pretty one dimensional to me. I've never understood the attraction that many seem to have for him. I wonder if in 2021 (at least for my generation), his writing style along with neurosis's and machismo would garner him many fans. It is sad that he had so many problems but then again, who doesn't?