Reel Life
From an article at nypost.com, edited by yours truly: I came across a term unknown to me that has actually been around for decades: “Whataboutism.” The Soviets used it whenever the USSR was criticized, citing the sins of the west. Today it describes Trump supporters who, when linked to the Capitol riot, cite Antifa and BLM violence. The word is in The Oxford English Dictionary.
Fly in the ointment? Headline from newsmax.com: “Twenty-Three Deaths in Norway Tied to COVID-19 Vaccine.”
I recently blogged about Simo Hayha, a Finnish sniper who killed more than 500 Soviet soldiers during WWII. His Wiki profile says he was featured in Hemingway and Gellhorn (2012), so I added it to my Netflix list. He is not in the version I saw. Perhaps there is another or his presence ended on the cutting room floor. Intrepid correspondent Martha Gellhorn, born in St. Louis, did cover Finland’s Winter War, but it is a very brief segment of the film, an HBO made-for-TV production. Most of the narrative takes place in Spain during the civil war. There she bonds with Hemingway, which leads to an affair and to her becoming his third wife. I have no idea how accurate the story is, and I’m not interested enough to research it. It never really takes off, despite the volatility of the lead characters, the presence of historical figures, and the stellar cast. I did not recognize Diane Baker as Gellhorn’s mom or spot Brooke Addams in her cameo. Robert Duvall looks as if he had fun as a Russian general. Metallica’s Lars Ulrich portrays a filmmaker. David Strathairn underplays writer John Dos Passos. Of the entire cast, I’d say Tony Shalhoub stands out as a calculating Soviet diplomat. Chaing Kai-Shek (Larry Tse’s only credit) and his wife are portrayed as clueless fools, although Joan Chen is good as the Mrs.. Communist leader Chou en Lai is portrayed as charismatic (Anthony Brandon Wong). Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman are the leads. I thought the former’s performance was lacking. Granted, the view of Hemingway as ultimately masculine lends itself to cliché. Kidman is solid, showing more fire than I recall her ever having on screen. Parker Posey is wasted as Hemingway’s fourth and last wife. From the screenplay, I got the impression Gellhorn was strictly a journalist. She also had novels and short stories published. Maybe I missed something. Director Phillip Kaufman, who has a solid canon that includes the rousing The Right Stuff (1983), chose to shoot in three different styles: color, sepia and black and white. Although it’s sort of cool, I was unable to figure out the purpose. Perhaps he was trying to capture the authenticity of the archival footage he used. I gazed at the clock a couple of times while viewing, always a sign that a movie is too long. It runs more than two-and-a-half hours. I suspect its appeal is restricted to admirers of the pair. 8900+ users at IMDb have rated Hemingway and Gellhorn, forging to a consensus of 6.3 on a scale of five, a bit high in my opinion. The script was written Jerry Stahl and the late Barbara Turner, who each have acting as well as writing credits. Turner was married to Vic Morrow until 1964 and is the mom of actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. Hemingway committed suicide at 61 in 1961. He had three sons by his first wife, and actress daughter Mariel by his last. Gellhorn, who was childless, married a second time and divorced after nine years. She lived until 90, passing away in 1998. She reported on just about every major conflict that raged during her 60-year career. Here are the writing titans:
And here are the actors who portrayed them:
My thanks to the young woman who purchased the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, and to the young man who bought Summerland, a novel by Michael Chabon; and to the gentleman who donated a nice blend of books in Russian and English.
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